History (USSR)

The earliest traces of human settlement on the territory that is now the USSR are associated with the Satani-Dar habitation site in Armenia and date from the Chellean (Abbevillian) culture (c. 400,000–600,000 years ago) of the Lower Paleolithic. The Acheulean stage (100,000–400,000 years ago) is represented by remains discovered in the Caucasus and the Ukraine; some implements from this period have also been found in Middle Asia. Sites of the Mousterian culture (35,000–100,000 years ago) have been found even farther north, up to the middle courses of the Volga and Desna rivers. Settlements of this culture have been discovered in unusually large numbers in the Crimea and Middle Asia.
The cultures mentioned above belong to the epoch of the primitive human herd, when man emerged as a biological species and society arose. Hunting and gathering were the principal means of subsistence for small human groups. The most important achievements of this time were the refinement of techniques for making stone implements, whose forms were improved; the production of the first bone implements; the mastery of methods for making fire; and the construction of dwellings, such as those at Molodova. The burial sites discovered at Teshik-Tash and Kiik-Koba give some evidence that religion developed at this time.
During the Upper Paleolithic (10,000–35,000 years ago) humans reached as far as the Pechora River, the Ural Region, the Western Siberian Lowland, Transbaikalia, and the valley of the middle Lena River. A leap forward in the development of productive forces and in the regulation of marital ties led to the emergence of the modern species of man: Homo sapiens. New techniques for the working of stone were developed, and compound implements appeared. Large communal dwellings—both ground-level and subterranean dwellings—were built, and clothing was sewn from animal hides. Archaeological finds from this period have been made at Kostenki, Mal’ta, and the Sungir’ site. Hunting, fishing, and gathering remained the principal means of subsistence. The primitive human herd gave way to the matrilineal-clan community. The first works of art were created: cave paintings and sculptural representations of people and animals, such as those found at Kostenki, Mezin, and the Kapova Cave.
With the invention of the bow and arrow in the Mesolithic (6,000–10,000 years ago), a new form of hunting was developed that led to greater mobility for the primitive communities. A semisettled way of life persisted until the next historical era, the Neolithic (6,000 B.C. –2,000 B.C), when the transition was made to producer economies, in which land cultivation and stock raising were practiced. Characteristic techniques for making implements were the grinding and polishing, as well as filing and drilling, of stone. The most important innovations were the development of pottery-making, spinning, and weaving and the invention of new means of transport: canoes, skis, and sleds. The first metal articles, made of copper, were produced toward the end of the Neolithic. Larger groupings—tribes—arose as individual clans grew and combined. The existence of tribes can be traced through various archaeological cultures, which sometimes reflect the local characteristics of large groups of tribes that had the same type of economy.
The Neolithic cultures on the territory of the USSR were quite diverse and represented different levels of social and economic development. Land cultivation and stock raising, along with metallurgy, developed earlier in the south. The archaeological sites of Dzheitun and Namazga-Tepe give evidence that the oldest culture of settled farmers arose in southern Turkmenistan in the sixth and fifth millennia B.C. In the fourth and third millennia villages of settled farmers and stock raisers existed not only in Middle Asia, but in the Caucasus (Maikop culture), the Ukraine, and Moldavia (Tripol’e culture). A complex economy, based primarily on stock raising, arose in the zone of steppes adjacent to regions of early crop-raising cultures. Farther north lived tribes that retained a hunting-fishing economy for another 1,500 years. In the Neolithic the developed clan system was the dominant form of social organization. Religion became more complex: along with totemism and animism, the matrilineal-clan worship of female keepers of home and hearth underwent further development.
In the Bronze Age (third and second millennia B.C), centers of metallurgy arose in Ciscarpathia, the Northern Caucasus, the Urals, and Kazakhstan; metals and finished articles were brought from these areas to other regions. A transition was made to producer economies in most of Eastern Europe and Middle Asia and in areas of Siberia and the Far East. The social division of labor intensified, and exchange increased between cultivators, stock raisers, and tribes that inhabited metal-rich regions. More goods were produced. The heads of large patriarchal families amassed considerable wealth, property distinctions increased, and conflicts between tribes became more frequent. The economic preconditions for exploitation appeared.
Unevenness in cultural and economic development in various regions, which had been manifested as early as the Neolithic, increased substantially in the Bronze Age. Remains of such cultures as the Trialet and Koban show that the culture and social relations of the tribes of the Northern Caucasus and Transcaucasia had attained a high level of development. The cultural and historical development of the Caucasus was fostered by its ties with the civilizations of the East. The tribes that inhabited Middle Asia, the tribes of the Timber-Frame culture of the southern European USSR, and the tribes of the Andronovo culture prevalent in Southern Siberia and the Ural Region were settled cultivators and stock raisers. The forested expanses of Eastern Europe and Asia were inhabited by tribes that retained a traditional Neolithic culture, a hunting-fishing economy, and matrilineal-clan relations. Tribes of the Middle Dnieper, Fat’ianovo, and other cultures constituted a distinct group of Bronze Age tribes. It is believed that they were stock-raising tribes that migrated deep into the territories inhabited by hunters and fishers. The tribal alliances later described by classical historians and geographers were formed in the Bronze Age.
Iron-making spread throughout most of the country, except for the north and northeast, in the first half of the first millennium B.C. The use of iron implements contributed to the further development of productive forces and the comparatively rapid disintegration of primitive communal relations. Only in the north, where the harsh natural conditions of the taiga and tundra prevailed, was the archaic, primitive mode of life preserved for a long period.
The first class societies and states arose at this time in the south: in Transcaucasia, the Crimea, and Middle Asia. The steppe and forest-steppe areas from the Severskii Donets to the middle Dnieper region were settled by tribes of cultivators that left artifacts of the Zarubintsy and Cherniakhov cultures. The Upper Volga Region, the banks of the Oka, and the Valdai Hills were inhabited by a large group of tribes of the D’iakovo culture. Tribes closely related to those of the D’iakovo culture settled what is now Estonia. The Hatched-ware culture was represented by tribes living along the lower course of the Zapadnaia Dvina and the right bank of the middle Neman. The basin of the middle Volga was settled by tribes of the Gorodetsk culture; the Kama, Viatka, and Belaia basins were settled initially by tribes of the Anan’ino culture (eighth to third centuries B.C.) and later by tribes of the P’ianyi Bor culture (late first millennium B.C. and early first millennium AD). In Siberia and the Altai the Iron Age began somewhat later, in the mid-first millennium B.C. The tribes of the Far East created a distinctive culture of the late Bronze and Iron ages.
The formation of many modern peoples can be traced with greater certainty in the Iron Age than in earlier times. Although in most cases problems pertaining to ethnic group formation are still far from being solved conclusively, some scholars believe that the Zarubintsy and Cherniakhov tribes influenced the culture of the East Slavs in the sixth and seventh centuries. Such scholars regard tribes of the D’iakovo culture as ancestors of the Meri, Muroma, and Ves’; the Gorodetsk tribes as ancestors of the Mordovians; the Anan’ino and P’ianyi Bor tribes as ancestors of the Udmurts and Komi; and the tribes of the Hatched-ware culture as ancestors of the ancient Baits. Among the nomadic peoples whose historical names are known are the Huns, Alani, Bulgars, and Turkic-speaking peoples, all of which influenced the histories of other tribes living within the territory of the USSR in the first millennium AD. These nomads, who were in the stage of the disintegration of the clan tribal system, entered into large tribal unions that later became states.
In the various regions of the country the transition from the primitive communal system to a class society took place at various times and under dissimilar conditions. In much of the territory of the USSR, it occurred in the first and the early second millennia AD. and resulted in the formation of the early feudal states. In the south, however, that is, in Transcaucasia, Middle Asia, and the Black Sea region, in areas associated with ancient slaveholding civilizations, it began as early as the first millennium B.C.; in these areas, slaveholding states emerged.
In Transcaucasia, by the turn of the first millennium B.C, many tribes had already reached the stage at which the clan tribal system was disintegrating and a class society was ready to emerge. In the eighth century B.C. what is now Armenia became part of the state of Urartu, whose capital was located at Lake Van. King Argistis I of Urartu annexed southern Transcaucasia and built several fortress-cities to serve as strongholds. The ruins of one such fortress, Erebuni, have been uncovered on the hill of Arin-berd in Yerevan; another, Argistikhinili, was located near what is now the village of Armavir, in the Ararat Valley. With varying success, the kingdom of Urartu warred against Assyria and northern nomadic tribes, the Cimmerians and Scythians. The fortress of Teishebaini, located on the hill of Karmir-Blur, near Yerevan, became very important in the seventh century B.C, when Urartu flourished anew. Excavations at the fortress have revealed many workshops, storage rooms, granaries, wine cellars, vessels, weapons, and decorations.
The struggle against the Urarteans helped the local Armenian tribes consolidate, but they remained too weak and disunited to found an independent state. Between the sixth and fourth centuries B.C the area inhabited by them belonged initially to the Persian Achaemenid state and later to the Seleucid state. The formation of a unified Armenian nationality was completed at this time; class relations developed, based on slaveholding and the exploitation of dependents still at the primitive communal stage. The important state of Greater Armenia was formed in the late fourth and third centuries B.C The city of Artashat, founded circa 176 B.C on the Araks River, became its capital. The state flourished in the late second and early first centuries B.C, when King Tigran II extended his possessions to the Mediterranean Sea. Tigran then joined King Mithridates VI Eupator of Pontus against Rome; he was defeated and his state disintegrated in 66 B.C, and only the regions in Armenia proper were left. In the first centuries AD., Armenia, which was ruled by kings of the Parthian Arshacid clan, became the object of a struggle between the Roman Empire and Parthia. After the fall of the Parthian Empire and the weakening of Rome, Armenia fell under the sway of the Sassanids in the third century AD. The decay of slaveholding relations and the formation of feudal relations took place in Armenia at this time.
Class relations and a rudimentary state system arose comparatively early among the Colchians and other Georgian tribes. Their socioeconomic development was accelerated under the influence of such Greek slaveholding city-states as Phasis (in the Poti region), Dioscurias (modern Sukhumi), and Pityusa (modern Pitsunda), which were established on the eastern Black Sea coast in the sixth century B.C. The first states in Western Georgia—it is not clear precisely when they arose—were unstable; in the second century B.C, Colchis was absorbed into the state of Mithridates VI Eupator. After his defeat, it became a dependency of Rome, and Roman garrisons were stationed throughout its territory. The state formation of the Laz tribes, whose capital was at Archeopolis (modern Nakalakevi), was consolidated in Western Georgia in the third century AD. Lazica too was dependent on Rome and later became a Byzantine dependency.
The kingdom of Iberia (Kartli) arose at the turn of the third century B.C in Eastern Georgia. Ruled by a local dynasty, it had its capital at Mtskheta, near which, on the right bank of the Kura, was the mighty fortress of Armaztsikhe. Iberia, an ally of Mithridates VI Eupator’s, was invaded in 65 B.C by Rome, whose vassalage it then became. The kingdom remained sufficiently strong, however, to serve thenceforth as a center unifying all Georgian tribes and as a bulwark of resistance against the Roman, Byzantine, and Iranian conquerors in Transcaucasia.
From the sixth to fourth centuries B.C, the tribes of eastern Transcaucasia (modern Azerbaijan) were part of the Achaemenid state. The slaveholding state of Atropatene arose in the late fourth century B.C in southern Azerbaijan, and the state of Albania, whose capital was at Kabala (Kabalaka), arose in northern Azerbaijan in the first century B.C Although the Roman campaigns into Transcaucasia reached Albania, they did not lead to the establishment of Roman hegemony there. Atropatene and Albania became dependencies of Sassanid Iran in the third and fourth centuries AD.
In the first millennium B.C, the steppes and semisteppes of Middle Asia were inhabited by nomadic stock-raising tribes; a settled population of cultivators lived in the river valleys and oases. The need to create an artificial irrigation system stimulated the use of slave labor, and the need to organize defense against constant raids by the nomads accelerated the development of a state system in crop-growing regions. The nomads of Middle Asia—the Saka and Massagetae—were also at the stage of the disintegration of the clan system. In the sixth century B.C, Middle Asia was conquered by the Achaemenids; in the lands along the lower course of the Amu Darya, which became separate from the Persian state in the fourth century B.C, the independent state of Khwarazm was formed. In 329, after routing Achaemenid Persia, Alexander the Great invaded Middle Asia, which he annexed despite the resistance of the local population (for example, the uprising of Spitamenes in Sogdiana). The hellenization of Middle Asia began at this time.
In the late fourth century B.C. the principal crop-growing regions of Middle Asia—Bactria, Sogdiana, and Margiana—became part of the Seleucid state, from which they separated, as the Greco-Bactrian kingdom, in the mid-third century B.C The kingdom flourished in the late third and early second centuries B.C, when it seized part of Iran and northern India. In the mid-second century B.C, however, it disintegrated into several independent regions, the most important of which was Sogdiana. Nomadic tribes of the Tochari (Yüeh-chih), which had decisively defeated Bactria and such nomads as the Usun and Hsiung-nu, formed primitive state associations, such as Kangiui; all the state associations disintegrated within a comparatively short period of time.
The mid-third century B.C. witnessed the rise of a new classical state, Parthia, which became a world power and successfully opposed the Roman Empire. Nisa, one of Parthia’s capitals, was located near what is now Ashkhabad; it has undergone considerable study by archaeologists. The Parthian Empire existed until the third century B.C, when it was conquered by Sassanid Iran. The Kushana kingdom, which became a major power, arose in Bactria in the first century A.D. Under King Kanishka (ruled early second century A.D.) it included (in addition to Bactria) Sogdiana, Khwarazm, and Fergana, as well as the regions that are now Afghanistan, Pakistan, and northern India. The kingdom warred with Parthia and maintained continual relations with Rome and Han China. Weakened in the third century A.D. by its struggle with the Sassanids, the Kushana kingdom disintegrated in the early fourth century, ushering in a period of crisis for the slave-holding states and for slaveholding relations in Middle Asia. Various nomadic alliances became dominant, the most important of which were the Ephthalite state (fifth and sixth centuries) and the Turkic Kaganate (sixth to eighth centuries).
In the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. the northern Black Sea coast was colonized by the Greeks. Classical city-states were established, notably Olbia on the Dnieper Liman, Chersonesus (modern Sevastopol’) in the southwestern Crimea, and Theodosia in the eastern Crimea. In addition, a number of cities along both sides of the Kerch’ Strait, such as Panticapaeum (modern Kerch’), Nymphaeum, Phanagoria, and Hermonassa, were founded; by the fifth century B.C. they had united to form the Bosporan state, which had its capital at Panticapaeum. Other, non-Greek, tribes became part of the Bosporan state, including the Sindians and Maeotae. The Tauri tribes, which inhabited the southern Crimea, were able to defend their independence.
The Greek slaveholding cities were the seats of an advanced classical culture. They established close economic, political, and cultural ties with the indigenous population of the northern Black Sea steppes—the Scythians and other Eastern European tribes. The Scythians, who included both nomadic stock raisers and settled cultivators, were on the threshold of the formation of a class society. Their ties with the classical cities stimulated the emergence in the fourth century B.C. of their own state, which extended from the Danube to the Don.
In the third and second centuries B.C. the Scythians were driven out by the Sarmatians, a related people that came to the Black Sea region from the steppes of the Trans-Volga Region. In the Crimea, however, a Scythian state, whose capital was Scythian Neapolis (near modern Simferopol’), continued to exist. The Sarmatian nomadic tribes were influenced by the classical states, although to a lesser degree than the Scythians. In turn, they substantially influenced the culture of the classical centers of the northern Black Sea region. At the end of the second century B.C, the classical cities of the northern Black Sea region became part of the state of Mithridates VI Eupator; after his defeat and death (63 B.C), they fell within the sphere of influence of the Roman state. The movement of tribes that began in the third century A.D. put an end to the dominance of the Sarmatians in the steppes of the Black Sea region and accelerated the decline of the classical cities, which had begun as slaveholding relations disintegrated. The Black Sea region became a staging area from which the “barbarians” launched attacks against the Roman Empire. The classical states of the northern Black Sea region were destroyed once and for all by the Huns in the last quarter of the fourth century A.D.
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Kamennyi vek na territorii SSSR. Moscow, 1970.Merpert, N. la., and D. B. Shelov. Drevnosti nashei zemli. Moscow, 1961.Formozov, A. A. Pamiatniki pervobytnogo iskusstva na territorii SSSR. Moscow, 1966.
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Antichnye goroda Severnogo Prichemomor’ia, vol. 1. Moscow-Leningrad, 1955.
Problemy istorii Severnogo Prichemomor’ia v antichnuiu epokhu. Moscow, 1959.Gaidukevich, V. F. Bosporskoe tsarstvo. Moscow-Leningrad, 1949.Kallistov, D. P. Severnoe Prichernomor’e v antichnuiu epokhu. Moscow, 1952.Zhebelev, S. A. Severnoe Prichernomor’e. Moscow-Leningrad, 1953.Shelov, D. B. Antichnyi mir v Severnom Prichernomor’e. Moscow, 1956.Blavatskii, V. D. Antichnaia arkheologiia Severnogo Prichemomor’ia. Moscow, 1961.Blavatskii, V. D. Pantikapei: Ocherki istorii stolitsy Bospora. Moscow, 1964.Smirnov, K. F. Savromaty. Moscow, 1964.Smirnov, A. P. Skify. Moscow, 1966.Tsvetaeva, G. A. Sokrovishcha Prichernomorskikh kurganov. Moscow, 1968.Grakov, B. N. Skify. Moscow, 1971.Artamonov, M. I. Kimmeriitsy i skify. Leningrad, 1974.
Skifskiimir. Kiev, 1975.Briusov, A. la. Ocherki po istorii piemen Evropeiskoi chasti SSSR v neoliticheskuiu epokhu. Moscow, 1952.Passek, T. S. Rannezemledel’cheskie (tripol’skie) plemena Podne-strov’ia. Moscow, 1961.Gurina, N. N. Drevniaia istoriia severo-zapada Evropeiskoi chasti SSSR. Moscow, 1961.Tret’iakov, P. N. Finno-ugry, baity i slaviane na Dnepre i Volge. Moscow-Leningrad, 1966.Tret’iakov, P. N. U istokov drevnerusskoi narodnosti. Leningrad, 1970.
Slaviane nakanune obrazovaniia Kievskoi Rusi. Moscow, 1963.Liapushkin, I. I. Slaviane vostochnoi Evropy nakanune obrazovaniia drevnerusskogo gosudarstva (VIII-l-ia polovina IX v.). Leningrad, 1968.Sedov, V. V. Slaviane Verkhnego Podneprov’ia i Podvin’ia. Moscow, 1970.Among the peoples of the northern Black Sea region, the Caucasus, and Middle Asia, the slaveholding system began to decline in the first half of the first millennium A.D. It gave way to a new socioeconomic stage of development: feudalism. Feudal relations, based on the exploitation of the labor of dependent peasants who worked their own farms, were historically progressive; such labor was more productive than slave labor. Although slave labor long remained a factor in the economy, feudal relations became dominant.
Among the peoples of the USSR, feudal relations emerged and evolved over an extended period of time. Feudalism did not develop at the same time or at the same rate among all peoples and in all regions: it arose in the first half of the first millennium A.D. among the Transcaucasian peoples, from the fifth to eighth centuries among the Middle Asian peoples, from the sixth to eighth centuries among the East Slavs, and from the ninth to 11th centuries among the Baltic peoples. The formation of early feudal relations was completed in the ninth and tenth centuries in Transcaucasia and Middle Asia and in the 11th century among the East Slavs.
Given a natural economy, the rise of the private ownership of land inevitably led to the emergence of separate holdings and feudal fragmentation; it engendered internecine strife among the feudal lords, who competed for land and for labor power—the peasants. This natural stage in the development of feudalism was characterized by an upsurge in productive forces, the extensive opening up of lands to cultivation, and the founding of cities. At the same time, the strife among the feudal lords damaged the economy of the various territories and made the state less able to fend off aggression.
The development of feudal relations was delayed in Transcaucasia, Middle Asia, and Rus’ by the Mongol conquests of the 13th century and in the Baltic by feudal-Catholic aggression from outside the region. As a result, the direction and rate of development of feudalism in various regions differed substantially. The political struggle in northeastern Rus’ for liberation from the Mongol-Tatar yoke was accompanied by stimulation of the economy and strengthening of the state system; in Middle Asia and Transcaucasia, however, the destruction of the economic base, in addition to invasion and civil war, made it impossible to form stable centralized states.
As the Russian state formed and expanded, it came to include peoples at various levels of socioeconomic development—from the primitive communal system to the transition to feudal relations, to developed forms of feudalism.
Transcaucasia and Middle Asia from the first half of the first millennium A.D. to the 13th century. Feudal relations were established in Armenia, Caucasian Albania, and Georgia by the mid-first millennium A.D. The peoples that settled these territories inherited the stable traditions, in various areas of material culture, of the slaveholding states of Transcaucasia. The formation of feudal relations in Transcaucasia was accompanied by the struggle of the peoples of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia against foreign aggressors: Iran, the Byzantine Empire, the Seljuk Turks, and the Arabian Caliphate.
In Armenia early feudal relations arose in the first half of the first millennium A.D. In 301, Christianity became the state religion. From the fourth to sixth centuries, Armenia warred against Iranian aggressors. The Byzantine Empire, which had aided Armenia in the wars against the Sassanids, itself tried to seize Armenia. In 387 the Byzantine Empire and Iran divided Greater Armenia between themselves. From the fourth to ninth centuries the liberation struggle of the Armenian people—the formation of the Armenian nationality had been completed in the fourth century B.C.—was combined with class struggle and extensive dissemination of heretical doctrines, notably by the Paulicians.
The Arabs conquered Transcaucasia in the first quarter of the eighth century, and the development of feudal relations in Armenia was slowed. Uprisings against Arab rule took place in 703, 748–750, 774–75, and 850–55. The rule of the caliphate was thrown off for good in the late ninth century. The liberation struggle of the Armenian people was depicted in the epic David of Sasun. In the ninth century, most of the region was ruled by the Armenian Bagratid dynasty; the territory under its control was known as the Ani Kingdom. At the same time that such cities as Ani, Dvin, and Artsn developed and large feudal estates were created, the country underwent feudal fragmentation into semi-dependent kingdoms and principalities. As the economy became increasingly based on large patrimonial estates, the personal dependence of the peasants became greater. The exacerbation of the class struggle was reflected in the Thondraki movement.
In the 11th century Armenia was attacked by the Byzantine Empire and the Seljuks, and many of its people left for the coasts of the Mediterranean, where the independent Cilician Armenian state survived for three centuries. In the 11th and 12th centuries the Armenian aristocracy, taking advantage of the decline of the Seljuk state, led a liberation movement of the popular masses. The liberation of Armenia spurred the development of handicrafts, commerce, culture, and science. Prominent Armenian scholars and scientists of the fifth to 13th centuries included Mesrop Mashtots, the inventor of the Armenian alphabet; Anania Shirakatsi, the astronomer and geographer; Ovanes Imastaser, the founder of an academy in Ani, the capital of Armenia; the physician Mkhitar Geratsi; the legal scholar and author of fables Mkhitar Gosh; and the philosopher and physician Grigor Magistr. Notable works of architecture were created in Echmiadzin (the Ripsime Church) and Ani.
In Georgia, the emergence and development of early feudal relations took place in the first half of the first millennium A.D. Christianity became the dominant religion in the third and fourth centuries. From the fourth to tenth centuries Georgia struggled against Iranian, Byzantine, and Arab aggressors. The formation of the Georgian nationality was completed between the sixth and tenth centuries. Feudalization moved forward more rapidly from the eighth to tenth centuries as the feudal aristocracy seized communal lands and enserfed the peasants. The large feudal principalities (kingdoms) of Kakhetia, Ereti, and Tao-Klardzheti were united with the Abkhazian Kingdom to form a state under King Bagrat III (ruled 975–1014) of the Bagration dynasty.
From the 1060’s to 1080’s, Georgia suffered devastating invasions by the Seljuk Turks. In the late 11th and early 12th centuries, under King David IV the Builder (ruled 1089–1125), it became strong once again. The city of Tbilisi was made the capital. Medieval Georgia was at its height from the late 11th to early 13th centuries. Under Queen Tamara (ruled 1184–1207), Georgia encompassed nearly all Transcaucasia; the cities flourished, and trade developed. Georgia’s political, commercial, and cultural relations with the other peoples of Transcaucasia and the Old Russian principalities became more extensive. Georgian culture flourished as well. Shota Rustaveli’s narrative poem The Man in the Panther’s Skin (late 12th century), which was imbued with ideas of humanism and patriotism, was an outstanding work of Georgian and world literature. A number of monumental architectural works were created in the 12th century, including the buildings of the Gelati Monastery, the cave complex of Vardzia, and the main section of the palace in Geguti.
Early feudal relations arose in Caucasian Albania, in the territory of modern Azerbaijan, during the first half of the first millennium A.D. Christianity became the state religion in the early fourth century. A struggle against Iranian invaders and nomadic Turkic tribes and antifeudal resistance by the popular masses, notably the Mazdakite movement of the late fifth and early sixth centuries, began in the third century. The territory of Azerbaijan was conquered by the Arabs in the seventh and early eighth centuries, and the forcible inculcation of Islam began. The popular struggle against the Arabian Caliphate took on a wide scope; of particular importance was the Babek Uprising of 816–837. In the mid-11th century Azerbaijan was invaded by the Seljuk Turks, whose yoke the people resisted for about 100 years. The states of the Kesranid and Ildiguzid dynasties rose in the period from the mid-12th to early 13th centuries.
Azerbaijani writers, scholars, and architects made a major contribution to world culture. In the 11th and 12th centuries, Azerbaijan produced such outstanding poets and thinkers as Abu al-Ala Ganjevi, Nizami Ganjevi, Feleki Shirvani, and Khaqani. Masterpieces of architecture were created in this period, notably the Maiden’s Tower in Baku, the fortress of Gulistan in Shirvan, and the mausoleum in Nakhichevan. The indigenous population of Caucasian Albania, which had intermingled with Iranian-speaking and Turkic-speaking tribes that had invaded the region in the first millennium B.C. and the first millennium A.D., played a role in the formation of the Azerbaijanis as an ethnic group. The formation of the Azerbaijani nationality was essentially completed in the period from the 11th to 13th centuries.
Feudal relations began developing in Middle Asia in the mid-first millennium A.D. From the fifth to eighth centuries A.D. the slaveholding system disintegrated, and early feudal relations emerged, in the territory of what is now the Tadzhik SSR, the Uzbek SSR, and the Turkmen SSR. The nomadic Ephthalite tribes initially, and Turkic tribes subsequently, played a major role in the feudalization of Middle Asia. In the fifth and sixth centuries all Middle Asia, Afghanistan, part of northern India, and other territories were subjugated by the Ephthalite state.
Middle Asia experienced an economic upsurge in the sixth and seventh centuries. Large tracts of land were concentrated in the hands of the landowning elite, and part of the rural population became dependent. By the mid-eighth century Middle Asia had been conquered by the Arabs, whom the people continued to resist for nearly a century. The popular uprising led by al-Mukanna in the 770’s and 780’s was notable for its duration and tenacity. Islam became the dominant religion under the Arabian Caliphate in Middle Asia.
In the ninth and tenth centuries, with the decline of the caliphate, Middle Asia was part of the Taharid state and then of the Samanid state, whose capital was at Bukhara. The formation of the Tadzhik nationality was completed at this time. In the period from the late tenth to the 12th century, Middle Asia formed part of various states, including the Ghaznavid state, the Karakhanid state, the Karakitai state, and Khwarazm. Middle Asia’s prominent scholars and poets included Rudaki (c. 860–941), the father of Tadzhik-Persian literature; Ferdowsi, (c. 940-c. 1020), the author of the Shah-nameh; and Ibn Sina (Avicenna; 980–1037).
From the ninth to 11th centuries, Turkic-speaking Oghuz tribes moved to the territory along the lower and middle courses of the Syr Darya and the northern and eastern Caspian region. After intermingling with the settled population, they played a major role in the formation of the Turkmen nationality, and they assumed the name “Turkmens.” In 1040, led by chieftains from a Seljuk clan, they conquered what is now Turkmenia, which as part of the Seljuk state experienced a period of substantial economic growth and further development of feudal relations. Merv became the capital of the state. The formation of the Uzbek nationality was essentially completed in the 11th and 12th centuries.
At the end of the 12th century the mutually hostile states of Middle Asia, such as those of the Karakhanids and Ghaznavids, were subjugated by the state of the Khwarazm-Shahs. Khwarazm, with the strongest army in Middle Asia, captured southern Kazakhstan and other territories in the early 13th century. Turkmenia fell under the sway of the Khwarazm-Shahs in the late 12th and early 13th centuries.
Siberia, the Urals, and the European USSR from the sixth to early 13th centuries. In the mid-first millennium A.D., the communal system began disintegrating among many of the cultivating and stock-raising tribes inhabiting what is now the European USSR, Siberia, and Kazakhstan. The Turkic Kaganate, a state created in Central Asia in the mid-sixth century by a Turkic tribal union, played an important role in consolidating the Turkic-speaking population of Eurasia. As military democracy died out among the Turkic peoples, early feudal relations began developing. The Turkic-speaking peoples decisively defeated the Ephthalite state in the 550’s. The growing economic and political might of the Turkic aristocracy resulted in civil wars, the collapse of the Turkic Kaganate, and the formation of the Eastern Turkic and Western Turkic kaganates at the turn of the seventh century. Weakened by socioeconomic contradictions and a protracted struggle with China, both states disintegrated in the mid-eighth century.
The area between the Hi and Chu rivers was occupied by the state of the Türgesh tribe in the first half of the eighth century and by the Karluk Kaganate of the Karluk tribe from the mid-eighth to mid-tenth centuries. The early feudal state of the Tungus tribes, among which were the Mokho, emerged in the early eighth century in the southern Primor’e region and in certain other areas of the Far East; in the eighth century it was known as Pohai. The state’s rulers successfully fought the emperors of T’ang China. In 926, Pohai was conquered by the Khitans.
In the mid-seventh century the nomadic and seminomadic tribes of the Lower Volga Region, the Northern Caucasus, and the Azov region and Don steppes were united under the Khazar Kaganate. The Finno-Ugric tribes of the Middle Volga Region and the Turkic-speaking Bulgar tribes that had come to the region in the seventh century were subjects of the Khazar Kaganate until the tenth century, when they formed the feudal state of Bulgaria on the Volga. The state maintained extensive commercial and political ties, notably with the Byzantine Empire, the states of Middle Asia, and the East Slavs.
The peoples of the Northern Caucasus formed the state of Alania at the turn of the tenth century. The tribes of the Kangar alliance, from which the Pechenegs emerged, roamed the lower and middle courses of the Syr Darya and the area north of the Aral Sea in the eighth and ninth centuries. In the late ninth century the Pechenegs, moving west from the Trans-Volga Region, invaded the Black Sea steppes; they also raided the Khazar Kaganate, the Byzantine Empire, and Rus’. The Pecheneg union disintegrated when its attacks were resisted by Rus’ in the tenth and first half of the 11th centuries and when an alliance of nomads, the Torks, moved into the Black Sea region. The steppes of the northern Black Sea region and Ciscaucasia were occupied by the Polovtsy from the 11th to early 13th centuries. In the second half of the 11th century large tribal unions were formed among the Polovtsy, who made the transition to feudalism in the late 12th century.
In the first centuries of the Common Era the territories that are now Latvia, Estonia, and Kaliningrad Oblast of the RSFSR were inhabited by the Curonians, Zemgalians, Latgals, and Selonians (all of whom subsequently formed the Latvian nationality), by Prussian tribes, and by Finno-Ugric tribes (Livs and Estonians). The tribes and tribal unions in what is now Lithuania included the Žemaičiai, Aukštaičiai, and Yotvingians (Sudovians). From the tenth to 13th centuries, power in Latvia and Estonia was concentrated in the hands of a clan tribal elite that was becoming feudalized. Plow farming, stock raising, and handicrafts underwent development. The population engaged in trade, including maritime trade. The Latvian and Estonian nationalities began forming. From the ninth to 12th centuries the Lithuanian tribes were at the stage of the transition from the primitive communal system to feudalism. Among the Prussians, from the ninth to 13th centuries the primitive communal system disintegrated, and a class society and state system emerged. By the 13th century the Prussians constituted a confederation of 11 principalities.
Old Russian state,EAST SLAVS. Areas now part of the USSR were settled by the East Slavs in the first millennium A.D. The East Slavs passed directly from the primitive communal system to feudalism. A number of East Slavic tribal unions were formed in the third quarter of the first millennium, when the prevailing form of social organization was military democracy. According to Byzantine and Gothic writers of the sixth and early seventh centuries, a Slavic tribal union known as the Antes, whose main occupation was land cultivation, inhabited the forest-steppe region between the Dnestr and Dnieper. An East Slavic tribal union, the Dulebs, was formed in the basin of the upper course of the Bug River and the right tributaries of the Pripiat’ River.
In the period from the sixth to ninth centuries unions of East Slavic tribes were also formed in such areas as the upper and middle Dnieper region, the region along the upper course of the Zapadnaia Dvina, and the Lake Il’men’ region; the tribes included the Poliane, Drevliane, Severiane, Slovene (Il’men’ Slavs), Radmichi, Krivichi, Dregovichians, Viatichi, Ulichi, and Tivertsy. The Poliane played the principal role in creating an early state in the middle Dnieper region: Rus’. The East Slavs engaged in such occupations as plow farming, stock raising, hunting, fishing, and wild-hive beekeeping. By the ninth and tenth centuries cities had developed among them, notably Beloozero, Kiev, Ladoga, Novgorod, Polotsk, and Smolensk; in addition, handicrafts—iron smelting, smithery, and jewelry-making—and economic exchange were undergoing development. The religion of the East Slavs was a system of cults that combined nature worship, ancestor worship, and the worship of agricultural spirits. The most important deities were Perun, Dazhbog, Svarog, Veles, and Stribog. Social relations were regulated by customary law.
KIEV AN RUS’ FROM THE NINTH TO EARLY 12TH CENTURIES. As primitive communal relations gradually disintegrated and the clan aristocracy grew rich, a clan tribal elite emerged, headed by military leaders known as princes. The East Slavic clan tribal aristocracy led military campaigns against the Byzantine Empire and other states, in the course of which the druzhina, an armed retinue of a prince, became consolidated as an institution. The subjugation of tribes and tribal unions by the princes led to an early form of social organization that was based on the exploitation of the popular masses. Although slave labor was known to the East Slavs, their development brought them, as it did that of many other peoples, to feudal production rather than a slave-holding mode of production, for which the requisite conditions did not exist in this area. Initially, in the ninth and tenth centuries, the main form of feudal exploitation was the imposition of tribute on subject tribes. Gradually, however, the princes, having usurped power in the vervi (communes), began seizing communal lands. As payment for services, the lands were turned over to the druzhiny for temporary use; with the lands went the right to collect taxes in kind and judicial fines.
One source for the enrichment of the elite was the route from the Varangians to the Greeks, a major trade link connecting northern Europe with the Byzantine Empire and the countries of the East by way of the Baltic Sea, such rivers as the Zapadnaia Dvina, Neva, Lovat’, and Dnieper, and the Black Sea. The aristocracy traded enslaved prisoners and the furs and beeswax received as tribute. Another important trade route followed the Volga and its tributaries, joining northern Europe and the East Slavs with Bulgaria on the Volga and the states of Middle Asia and the Middle East.
In 882, Oleg, prince of Novgorod (ruled in Kiev 882–912), subjugated the cities and lands along the route from the Varangians to the Greeks and made Kiev his capital. An early feudal state emerged: Kievan Rus’. In 907, Oleg carried out a successful maritime campaign against the Byzantine Empire, captured its capital, Constantinople, exacted a large tribute from the vanquished, and in 911 concluded a commercial treaty beneficial to Rus’. Oleg’s successor, Igor’ (ruled 912–945), continued the unification of the East Slavic tribes. In 945, Igor’s violation of the established procedure for collecting tribute sparked an uprising by the Drevliane, during which Igor’ was killed. Igor’s widow, Princess Ol’ga (ruled 945–969), harshly suppressed the uprising of the Drevliane and established a system for the collection of tribute that was even more favorable to the state.
In the third quarter of the tenth century, Kievan Rus’ was strengthened in its dealings with foreign states by the energetic administrative and military activity of Prince Sviatoslav Igorevich (ruled 945–972 or 945–973), who warred against the Khazar Kaganate, the Byzantine Empire, and the Pechenegs. In 988 or 989, Prince Vladimir Sviatoslavich (ruled 980–1015) introduced Christianity of the Byzantine rite as the state religion. Christianity helped unite the various parts of the Kievan state, the economic ties among which were weak, and strengthen the new social relations. The church organization that arose in Rus’ eventually became a large feudal landowner, and churches and monasteries became centers for the development of written language, architecture, and painting.
The princes and their retainers became landowners in the period from the ninth to 11th centuries. The Russkaia Pravda, a collection of 11th-century laws, included decrees designed to protect the power and property of the feudal lords; this document provides evidence that the corvée system of farming existed in Kievan Rus’.
The development of feudal relations in Rus’ was accompanied by an increase in the number of cities, from 25 in the ninth and tenth centuries to about 90 in the 11th century; the cities were political, administrative, and military centers. The economic basis of the rise of the city was the social division of labor, the differentiation of handicrafts, and the expansion of new commercial relations. The veche, or town meeting, greatly influenced the course of political events and often became the focal point of clashes between the aristocracy and the urban poor.
The development of feudal relations was accompanied by a bitter class struggle, as evidenced by uprisings of the smerdy (feudally dependent peasant farmers) and townspeople, notably in the Rostov-Suzdal’ Principality in 1024 and circa 1071, in Kiev in 1068–69 and 1113, and in Novgorod circa 1071. Such revolts often assumed the form of religious uprisings and were led by volkhvy (magi), priests who presided over pagan cults.
The early feudal Kievan state reached its zenith in the tenth and first half of the 11th centuries. Under Prince Iaroslav the Wise (ruled 1019–54), Kievan Rus’ became the largest state of medieval Europe. It occupied an enormous area—from the Taman’ Peninsula in the south to the region of the upper Severnaia Dvina in the north, and from the Dnestr and the upper Vistula in the west to the upper courses of the Don and Volga in the east. Kiev maintained close commercial ties with many states of the East and West. Extensive political contacts were established, in particular, through marriage ties with the ruling houses of such countries as Poland, France, Hungary, and Norway. Kievan Rus’ successfully opposed the Byzantine Empire’s bid for dominance in the northern Black Sea region and the Dnieper region and fought off invasions by tribal unions, notably the Pechenegs.
Old Russian culture, which drew primarily on local traditions and was enriched by Byzantine influence, attained a high level of development. Outstanding literary texts included chronicle codices (11th century), the Primary Chronicle (early 12th century), such hagiographic works as The Lives of Boris and Gleb and The Life of Feodosii Pecherskii (11th and early 12th centuries), and the works of such figures as Metropolitan Ilarion and Vladimir Vsevolodovich Monomakh. The princes Vladimir Sviatoslavich and Iaroslav the Wise established schools and libraries and enlisted the services of remarkable builders, architects, and painters. A wide variety of craftsmen worked in such cities as Kiev, Novgorod, and Chernigov. The tenth and 11th centuries saw the construction of the Desiatinnaia Church (Church of Tithes) and the Golden Gate in Kiev; the Sophia cathedrals in Kiev, Novgorod, and Polotsk; the Spaso-Preobrazhenskii Cathedral in Chernigov; the Kiev-Pecherskaia Laura; and the Vydubetskii Monastery.
The Old Russian nationality, from which the fraternal Russian, Ukrainian, and Byelorussian nationalities subsequently evolved, took shape in Kievan Rus’. The Kievan period marked the beginning of the formation of a state system among the East Slavs.
FEUDAL FRAGMENTATION IN RUS’. Rus’ exhibited a marked tendency toward feudal dissociation as early as the second half of the 11th century, after the death of Iaroslav the Wise in 1054. The growing economic self-sufficiency of the cities that were the capitals of principalities, notably the cities of Novgorod, Chernigov, and Polotsk, was accompanied by a struggle of the Russian princes for political independence from Kiev. At an assembly of the princes held in the city of Liubech in 1097, it was decided that princes should inherit the lands of their fathers and that their holdings should be independent.
Faced with an exacerbation of social contradictions and with external danger, primarily the threat posed by the Polovtsy, Vladimir Monomakh (ruled 1113–25 in Kiev) succeeded in slowing the disintegration of the Kievan state. In 1132, however, after the death of the grand prince of Kiev Mstislav Vladimirovich (ruled 1125–32), the state disintegrated once and for all. Some 15 states emerged, all of which enjoyed de facto independence. The preeminence of the Kievan prince, who was still referred to as grand prince, was now purely nominal. The princes of such lands as Chernigov and Vladimir also used “grand” in their titles.
Novgorod occupied a special place in the history of medieval Rus’. The people of Novgorod opposed the hegemony of the Kievan princes as early as the first quarter of the 11th century. In contrast to the other lands of Kievan Rus’, Novgorod in the tenth and 11th centuries did not have hereditary princely rule. In the 11th century, the will of the Novgorodian veche was decisive on a number of occasions in keeping a particular prince on the Novgorodian throne. The real power was wielded by the feudal and urban elite. The Novgorodian boyars, supported by the urban populace, pushed for the separation of Novgorod from Kiev. A final attempt to rein in the Novgorodian boyars was made under Vladimir Monomakh. In 1118 the boyars were summoned to Kiev, where they were forced to swear an oath of loyalty; some were charged with abuses and imprisoned. Such punishment did not put an end to the separatist aspirations of Novgorod, however.
Taking advantage of a broad movement of the popular masses, the boyars and leading merchants drove out Prince Vsevolod Mstislavich in 1136 and formed the Novgorod feudal republic. Supreme power passed to the veche, which elected the posadnik (chief administrative official) and tysiatskii (second-highest official), both of whom had previously been appointed by the prince; beginning in 1156 it also appointed the archbishop. In addition, the veche invited outside princes to serve as prince of Novgorod; the prince performed various functions, primarily military. Eventually, the boyars created their own governmental body, the “council of notables,” which wielded de facto power in Novgorod. Although power was effectively in the hands of rival groups of the local boyar elite, craftsmen and tradesmen had a substantial influence on events. Popular antifeudal uprisings occurred frequently, the most important in 1136, 1207, 1228–29, and 1270.
The Novgorod feudal republic expanded east and southeast between the 12th and 15th centuries, absorbing the Lake Onega region, the Severnaia Dvina basin, and the White Sea coast. Their enormous holdings in the north enabled the Novgorodian feudal lords to become suppliers of such commodities as furs, walrus tusks, hemp, train oil, and beeswax to Western Europe, which in turn shipped cloth, metals, weapons, wines, and jewelry to Novgorod. The Novgorodian merchants joined together to form trading corporations, which dealt with Sweden, with cities in Germany and Denmark, and with Russian principalities. Novgorod was not only a commercial center but a highly developed center of handicrafts. Its culture, represented in folklore, chronicles, painting, and architecture, was distinguished by a striking originality and, to a degree, democratism. The beresto (birch bark) writings, more than 500 of which have been uncovered, testify to a high rate of literacy among the people of Novgorod.
The Rostov-Suzdal’ principality, which subsequently became the Vladimir-Suzdal’ Principality, arose in northeastern Rus’ in the 11th century. An influential substratum of boyar landowners—the de facto masters of the region—emerged in the old Russian cities of Rostov and Suzdal’. New cities appeared in the 12th century, among them Vladimir, Pereiaslavl’ (Pereslavl’-Zalesskii), and Iur’ev-Pol’skii. Prince Iurii Dolgorukii of Rostov-Suzdal’ (ruled 1125–57) waged a stubborn struggle against the Russian princes of the south to become grand prince of Kiev. In the course of the struggle, he built fortresses to protect his territory, including the fortress of Moscow in 1156; Moscow is first mentioned in the chronicles under the year 1147.
The Rostov-Suzdal’ Principality was further strengthened, and the power of the prince consolidated, during the reign of Andrei Bogoliubskii (ruled 1157–74), who, supported by the middle and lesser feudal lords of the druzhina, removed the old boyars from the government and moved the capital of the principality to Vladimir on the Kliaz’ma River. The Vladimir-Suzdal’ Principality became a powerful state under Andrei Bogoliubskii and Vsevolod Bol’shoe Gnezdo (ruled 1176–1212). Remarkable works by the architects of Vladimir-Suzdal’ have been preserved: the Uspenskii Cathedral, the Cathedral of St. Dmitrii, and the Golden Gate, all in Vladimir, and the Pokrov Church of the Nerl’.
The largest state in southwestern Rus’ was the Galician-Volynian Principality, which was formed when Prince Roman Mstislavich united the Galician Principality and the Vladimir-Volyn Principality in 1199. At a time when the Polovtsy were carrying out raids and the princes were embroiled in internecine strife, the Galician-Volynian Principality underwent an economic upsurge, largely owing to its favorable geographic position. Roman Mstislavich (ruled 1199–1205) and Daniil Romanovich (ruled 1211–64) waged a bitter struggle against the Galician boyars, who possessed great economic and political power.
The commercial and political importance of such cities as Galich, Vladimir-Volynskii, and Terebovl’ increased in the 12th and 13th centuries. The townspeople became stronger and supported the central authority in large part because of the struggle against the boyars. The Galician-Volynian Principality had to defend its independence against Lithuanian and Hungarian feudal lords, the Catholic Church, and, eventually, the Mongol-Tatar invaders. Notable cathedrals and palaces built in the Galician-Volynian Principality in the 12th and first half of the 13th centuries included the Uspenskii Cathedral in Vladimir-Volynskii (12th century) and the palace in Galich (12th century). Among other cultural achievements, book-making and chronicle writing underwent development.
The economic and cultural upsurge experienced, in varying degrees, by all the Russian principalities at the turn of the 13th century was hampered by the internecine strife of the princes, which weakened the country. The Tale of Igor’s Campaign sounded a call for unity. Written by an anonymous author in the late 12th century, it expressed with enormous artistic power an ardent love for the Russian land and concern for the land’s fate.
Struggle of the peoples of Eastern Europe, Middle Asia, and Transcaucasia against foreign invaders in the 13th century. In the early 13th century nomadic Mongol tribes headed by Temujin, who later took the name Genghis Khan, formed an early feudal state in Central Asia, in the Kerulen and Orkhon river valleys. In addition to Mongols, the army of Genghis Khan included Tatars and other peoples. In 1219, after conquering various territories, notably North China and Southern Siberia, the Mongol-Tatars invaded Middle Asia, where they routed the Khwarazm-Shahs; they then moved into northern Iran and Transcaucasia. In 1223 they inflicted a serious defeat on the Russian princes at the Kalka River in the Black Sea steppes. The campaigns of Genghis Khan and his sons and military commanders led to the creation of the huge Mongol feudal empire, which included subjugated peoples of various economic, political, and cultural traditions.
In 1224, Genghis Khan divided his empire into hereditary appanages (uluses), which passed to his sons. Ogadai’s ulus comprised Mongolia proper and North China, Jagatai’s encompassed Middle Asia, and Jochi’s embraced the territory west and south of the Irtysh as far as the Urals, the Aral Sea, and the Caspian Sea. In 1256 another ulus, ruled by Genghis Khan’s grandson Hulagu, was created; it encompassed Transcaucasia and part of Iran.
In 1236, Batu, a son of Jochi’s and a grandson of Genghis Khan’s, led a pan-Mongol campaign west in which 14 khans took part. Bulgaria on the Volga and the Northern Caucasus were conquered in 1236 and 1237. In the winter of 1237 the Mongol-Tatars invaded the Russian principalities, capturing and destroying Riazan’, Kolomna, Moscow, Vladimir, and 14 other cities, including Torzhok and Kozel’sk. Everywhere the invaders encountered fierce resistance by the Russian people.
In the spring of 1238, 100 versts (107 km) from Novgorod, the Mongol-Tatars turned southward and moved into the Lower Volga Region. In 1239 they conquered the Mordovian lands and other territories and struck against the southern Russian principalities, destroying Pereiaslavl’ and Chernigov. In 1240 and 1241 the Mongol-Tatars captured southern Rus’, including Kiev, and the territories of the Galician-Volynian Principality; they entered Poland, Hungary, and Bohemia. A four-year struggle against Rus’ weakened the Mongol-Tatar host. In 1241 the Mongol-Tatars were defeated by Bohemian, German, and Polish forces near Olomouc. Crossing Hungary and reaching the shore of the Adriatic Sea, the Mongol-Tatars halted their westward advance and turned back. The heroic struggle of Rus’ saved Europe from the Mongol-Tatar yoke.
Figure 1. Mongol-Tatars drive captives from Galician-Volynian Rus’. Miniature from a Hungarian chronicle of 1488.The Mongol-Tatars massacred or sent into captivity a large number of people; in addition, they inflicted enormous damage on the economy and culture of the subjugated peoples and retarded the people’s development for a long period. The devastation of a large number of cities resulted in the preservation of feudal relations. The Mongol-Tatars, by supporting the internecine struggle of the Russian princes, halted the political consolidation of Rus’.
In the 1240’s Batu, having inherited the ulus of Jochi, founded the state of the Golden Horde. Its first capital, Sarai-Batu, was located on the lower Volga; in the first half of the 14th century the capital was moved to Sarai-Berke. The state included the northern Black Sea region, the Northern Caucasus, the Middle Volga Region, the Lower Volga Region, the Ural Region, Western Siberia, and western Kazakhstan. The Russian principalities were political dependencies of the Golden Horde.
The development of early feudal states in Latvia and Estonia and among the Prussians was interrupted in the early 13th century by the aggression of German, Swedish, and Danish feudal lords, who were actively supported by the pope. Aggression against the peoples of the Baltic was an essential part of the Crusades of the Teutonic Order. Beginning in the late 12th century, Latvia experienced an invasion led initially by the German bishops and subsquently by the Order of the Knights of the Sword, known as the Livonian Order after 1237. The Livs were subjugated by 1205. In 1208 the German feudal lords launched devastating campaigns against the Estonians. The Germans conquered Estonia in 1227. In the period from the 1220’s to 1283 the Teutonic Order captured the lands of the Prussians. As the Livs, Estonians, Curonians, and Zemgalians were subjugated (the Curonians in 1267 and the Zemgalians in 1290), German feudal states arose in the southeastern Baltic region, notably the Livonian Order and the Archbishopric of Riga. The peoples of the Baltic region heroically resisted the Crusaders. The conquest of the Baltic region caused the culture of the peoples that fell under the sway of the colonialists to stagnate for a long period.
The German feudal lords carried their aggression to the borders of the Russian principalities. The Swedes took advantage of the weakness of Rus’, a result of the Mongol-Tatar invasion, to strike at the rich Novgorodian republic. On July 15,1240, Prince Aleksandr Iaroslavich, who had been invited from the Vladimir-Suzdal’ Principality, led the people of Novgorod in a rout of a Swedish army on the Neva River, after which he was known as Alexander Nevsky; the Swedish force was led by Birger Jarl, the ruler of Sweden. Alexander Nevsky (ruled 1236–63) halted the eastward movement of the German knights by defeating them in the Battle on the Ice, which was fought on Lake Chudskoe on Apr. 5,1242.
Unification of the Russian lands. An economic upsurge began at the turn of the 14th century. The quickening of economic activity—along with the migration of large numbers of people to northeastern Rus’, which was protected by forests from the raids of the Mongol-Tatars—facilitated the unification of the Russian principalities into a single state. In addition to the principalities that had developed in the Vladimir-Suzdal’ region even before the Mongol-Tatar invasion, several new principalities were formed, the most important of which were Beloozero, Kostroma, Tver’, and Moscow. The principalities of Moscow, Riazan’, Suzdal’, Nizhny Novgorod, and Tver’ became stronger in the late 13th and first half of the 14th centuries.
The prince who received a yarlyk (decree of the khan) from the Golden Horde entitling him to rule the Grand Principality of Vladimir was considered the ruler of all Rus’. The rulers of such principalities as Moscow and Tver’ fought one another for the throne of the grand prince. The largest, or grand, principalities were divided into appanages ruled by relatives of the grand prince, who were aided by a council of boyars, the Boyar Duma. In addition, boyars headed various branches of the prince’s administration. The areas of a principality that were not under the jurisdiction of the prince’s court were governed by namestniki (vicegerents) and volosteli, who were in charge of the districts known as volosti. Under the kormlenie system, the namestniki and volosteli were empowered to collect various revenues for their upkeep.
Moscow became the center for the unification of the Russian lands and the formation of a single state. Its favorable location made possible its transformation into the organizer of the Russian people’s struggle for independence. The ethnic nucleus of the Great Russian nationality developed around Moscow.
The elevation and expansion of the Moscow Principality began under Prince Daniil Aleksandrovich (ruled 1276–1303). In the first quarter of the 14th century, the princes of Moscow engaged in a long struggle with the princes of Tver’ for the throne of the grand prince. Ivan I Danilovich Kalita (ruled 1325–40) played a major role in strengthening the Moscow Principality; he obtained the right to be grand prince of Vladimir and to collect tribute from the Russian lands for payment to the Horde. K. Marx noted that “under him, the foundations of Moscow’s might were laid” (Arkhiv Marksa i Engel’sa, vol. 8,1946, p. 149).
A feudal war was waged in the late 1360’s and 1370’s between the grand prince of Moscow, Dmitrii Ivanovich Donskoi (ruled 1359–89), and the prince of Tver’, Mikhail Aleksandrovich, who was aided by Lithuania. Dmitrii Donskoi, after constructing the stone Moscow Kremlin and repulsing the attacks of the Lithuanian grand duke, Algirdas, an ally of Tver’, inflicted a series of defeats on the princes of Tver’, Nizhny Novgorod, and Riazan’.
In the second half of the 14th century, Moscow organized a struggle to overthrow the Mongol-Tatar yoke. The battle of Kulikovo of Sept. 8, 1380, in which Russian soldiers under Dmitrii Donskoi routed the host of Mamai, consolidated Moscow’s position as the leading principality. Dmitrii Donskoi was the first prince to pass on the title of grand prince of Vladimir to his son as an inheritance, without the sanction of the khans of the Horde. Under his son, Vasilii I Dmitrievich (ruled 1389–1425), the principality of Nizhny Novgorod was annexed by Moscow in the late 14th century. In the 1390’s Moscow began a struggle against the Novgorod republic for the Dvina Land.
The Golden Horde disintegrated as a result of the development of feudal relations, the emergence of separate feudal holdings, and the intensification of the liberation struggle of the Russian and other peoples. The Nogai Horde and Tiumen’ Khanate emerged from the former possessions of the Golden Horde in the late 14th and early 15th centuries; the Siberian Khanate was formed, followed by the Kazan Khanate in 1438, the Crimean Khanate in 1443, and the Astrakhan Khanate in the mid-15th century.
In their attempts to unify the Russian lands, the princes of Moscow encountered resistance from the appanage princes. In the second quarter of the 15th century Vasilii II Vasil’evich Temnyi (ruled 1425–62) successfully waged a feudal war against his relatives Iurii Dmitrievich, Vasilii Iur’evich Kosoi, Dmitrii Shemiaka, and Dmitrii Krasnyi, appanage princes of Galich and Zvenigorod.
The unification of the country took place as the feudal mode of production continued to develop. The main support for centralization came from the secular and clerical feudal lords, who had an interest in the strengthening of state power and in the defense of their own holdings against external threats and uprisings by the popular masses. As agriculture in Rus’ experienced an upsurge in the 14th and 15th centuries, the value of holdings increased, intensifying the struggle for land among the feudal lords. At the same time, the extent of church holdings grew markedly. The princes encouraged colonization by the monasteries, and in the forested areas of northeastern Rus’ numerous monasteries were established, notably the St. Sergius Trinity, Kirill-Belozersk, and Ferapontov monasteries.
The population density in the central regions of the country increased, and peasant settlers were forced to turn for help to the feudal lords, whose dependents they became. The state had at its disposal the chernye zemli (literally, “black lands”), which the princes granted to the boyars and the church. Substantial holdings were the personal property of the princes: Ivan Kalita had more than 50 villages, and Vasilii II more than 125. The boyars became great feudal lords. The votchina, or patrimonial estate, was the typical form of land tenure among the boyars and other feudal lords in the 14th and 15th centuries. Conditional land tenure emerged along with the votchina: princes and the metropolitan turned over lands to courtiers and military servitors, who in return performed specified duties. Free peasants actively protested against the distribution of lands they occupied. Conflicts between the chernososhnye krest’iane (peasants directly dependent on the feudal government rather than an individual) and the monasteries, which encroached on their lands, became acute: in defending their lands, the peasants sometimes drove off those who founded monasteries or intended to do so.
The rise of the cities became marked in the mid-14th century. Such cities as Tver’, Moscow, and Nizhny Novgorod grew rapidly, along with the cities that had escaped devastation by the Mongol-Tatars, such as Novgorod, Pskov, and Smolensk. Ruza, Vereia, Borovsk, Serpukhov, and Kashira were among the villages known for commerce and handicrafts that became cities. As a result of foreign invasions and the constant wars among the princes, the cities became more important, both as strategic points and as centers from which the feudal lords dominated the surrounding rural population. Various handicrafts developed in the cities, including founding, metalworking, and smithery. In such cities as Moscow and Novgorod there existed settlements of armorers, who fashioned coats of mail, helmets, hauberks, and swords. In the late 14th and 15th century Russian craftsmen, notably in Moscow and Tver’, began producing cannons. Trade fostered communication among regions; the large feudal landowners, especially the monasteries, played a major role in commerce. The urban merchants engaged primarily in foreign trade. The economic fragmentation of the country had yet to be overcome.
In the 14th and 15th centuries Rus’ carried on an international trade with the Golden Horde, the countries of the Caspian region, and the Genoese colony of Surozh (Sudak) in the Crimea. In Moscow there arose merchants’ corporations whose members were called Surozhites. The Muscovite merchants known as sukonniki (cloth merchants) carried on a trade in Western European cloth in Rus’. The merchants of Moscow, Kolomna, Mozhaisk, and Tver’ traded with Lithuania and with the Russian, Ukrainian, and Byelorussian lands that formed part of the Lithuanian state. Novgorod traded with the cities of the Baltic region and with the Hanseatic League.
The Russian (Great Russian) nationality evolved from the Old Russian nationality in the 14th and 15th centuries.
Russian state from the late 15th to early 17th centuries. Under the grand prince of Moscow Ivan III Vasil’evich (ruled 1462–1505) the Mongol-Tatar yoke was thrown off as a result of the military hostilities known as the stand on the Ugra River of 1480. Moscow annexed Yaroslavl in 1463, Rostov in 1474, Novgorod in 1478, Tver’ in 1485, and Viatka in 1489. Under Vasilii III Ivanovich (ruled 1505–33), Pskov was brought under Moscow’s control in 1510; as a result of wars with Lithuania, the Smolensk region and the lands of the Verkhovskie and Severskii principalities were added in 1514, and Riazan’ in 1521. Many non-Russian peoples of northern European Russia became part of the Russian state, notably the Mari, Mordovians, Iugra, Komi, Pechora, and Karelians; subsequently the multinational character of the state became even more pronounced. In the second half of the 15th and early 16th centuries most of the Russian lands were unified in the Russian state, whose formation and consolidation were historically progressive, since they put an end to internecine wars and secured the country against foreign invasion.
The Russian state entered into political and commercial relations with Europe. Especially close contacts were established in the late 15th century with Poland, Hungary, Denmark, Sweden, and the German emperors.
The centralization of state power and administration moved forward. Ivan III Vasil’evich’s Sudebnik (Code) of 1497 introduced a unified judicial and administrative system.
The pomest’e (fief) system of land tenure began to develop in the late 15th and 16th centuries. The pomest’e was held by a nobleman (dvorianin), who rendered service, generally military service; the owner of the land was the grand prince. The pomest’e could not be sold or passed on as an inheritance. The nobility (dvoriantstvo), which rendered service, was the backbone of the state’s armed forces. The growing need of the feudal state and the feudal lords for money led them to increase the profitability of the votchiny and pomest’ia by transforming obligations into money taxes, raising the amount of quitrent, setting aside fields for their own tillage, and compelling the peasants to perform corvée. The peasants and townspeople were forced to perform services to the state as well.
Under the Sudebnik of 1497, throughout the state peasants could change owners during a single period, usually the week before and after St. George’s Day (November 26, Old Style). The evolution of the feudal economy brought about increased exploitation and the exacerbation of conflicts between the feudal lords and the peasants. The townspeople also resisted feudal oppression: uprisings took place, notably in Moscow in 1547. The developments listed above were among the causes for a deterioration of the domestic political situation in the country. Numerous traces of feudal fragmentation were evident in 16th-century Russia. Semi-independent political formations became part of the Russian state in the first half of the 16th century: the appanages of lurii and Andrei, sons of Ivan III; the Kasimov Khanate; and the small appanages of the princes Vorotynskii, Mstislavskii, and Bel’skii. V. I. Lenin noted that “by the Middle Ages, the era of the Moscovite tsars, . . . one could hardly speak of national ties in the true sense of the term at that time: the state split into separate ‘lands,’ sometimes even principalities, which preserved strong traces of the former autonomy, peculiarities of administration, at times their own troops (the local boyars went to war at the head of their own companies), their own tariff frontiers, and so forth” (Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 1, p. 153).
By the mid-16th century, Russia extended on the north to the White and Barents seas, on the south to Chernigov and the Riazan’ lands, on the west to the coast of the Gulf of Finland and such cities as Smolensk, and on the east to the Northern Urals and the Nizhny Novgorod lands. The area of the Russian state grew from 430,000 sq km in the early 1460’s to 2.8 million sq km in the 1530’s. The population increased from 5–6 million at the beginning of the 16th century to 8 million by mid-century.
Land cultivation remained the principal occupation of the rural population. The fallow system of cultivation, with three-field crop rotation, had become dominant in central Russia by the mid-16th century. In the north and northeast the three-field system was combined with slashing and irregular sowing. The three-field system had not yet supplanted shifting agriculture in the south.
Pomest’e land tenure developed rapidly in the first half of the 16th century. In the central districts, it had already been extended to more than one-third of the land, although votchina tenure remained the dominant form of feudal landownership. The growth of corvée and quitrent required that the power of the feudal lords be strengthened and that serfdom be developed further.
Handicraft production moved forward. Novgorod, the Serpukhov-Tula region, and Ustiuzhna-Zheleznopol’skaia became centers for the iron industry; Sol’-Galitskaia, Una and Nenoksa (on the White Sea coast), and Sol’vychegodsk became salt-producing centers; and such cities as Yaroslavl became centers for the production of leather goods. The north provided furs and received grain from the central regions of the country. Moscow was the country’s biggest market.
By developing its trade with the West and East, the Russian state helped enhance its international prestige. In the first half of the 16th century, trade with the East, notably the Ottoman Empire, Iran, and Middle Asia, was more viable than trade with Western Europe, which was conducted via the Ottoman Empire, Lithuania, and the Baltic region. Russia established regular commercial relations with England.
In the mid-16th century the state already included some 160 cities, most of which were fortified military and administrative centers, especially along the frontiers. Moscow had a population of about 100,000. The elite of the commercial and craft districts in the cities comprised the members of the privileged corporations of merchants: the gosti, the Sukonnaia Sotnia, and the Gostinaia Sotnia. Notable members of the elite included the Tarakanovs and the Khoznikovs. The largest Russian commercial house, that of the Stroganovs, was active in Sol’vychegodsk. The use of hired labor increased, primarily in salt-making and the iron industry.
In the first half of the 16th century, supreme power resided in the grand prince and the Boyar Duma—the estate council of the princely boyar aristocracy. Beginning in 1547, Ivan IV Vasil’evich (Ivan the Terrible; grand prince 1533–84, tsar 1547–84), sovereign of all Rus’, bore not only the title of grand prince but that of tsar. By having himself crowned tsar, Ivan IV helped consolidate his rule and enhance the international prestige of the Russian state. Under the mestnichestvo system, the appointment of a feudal lord to high administrative, judicial, and military office was determined by his place on a hierarchical ladder. New central administrative offices, the prikazy, evolved from the gosudareva kazna (state financial apparatus) and its staff of d’iaki (secretaries).
With the help of the Selected Council, the government of Ivan IV carried out in the mid-16th century a number of major reforms, primarily administrative and military, aimed at further centralizing the state; these included the adoption of the Sudebnik of 1550, the implementation of the decisions of the Stoglav Synod of 1551, the establishment of the strel’tsy (semiprofessional musketeers), the promulgation of the Code of Service, the convocation of the zemskie sobory (national assemblies), and the replacement of namestniki and volosteli by agencies of local government beginning in the 1550’s.
The 16th century saw the formation of an estate monarchy; its essential elements were established by mid-century. The zemskie sobory, convoked at irregular intervals by the supreme authority, usually for the purpose of discussing legislation, functioned as the highest estate council. They were attended by the Boyar Duma and by representatives of the clergy (the Holy Council), of the Moscow and provincial nobility, and, to some extent, of the merchantry and posadskie liudi (middle and lower urban classes subject to the tiaglo, a system of state duties). The guba (administrative district) reform that was implemented in the period from the late 1530’s to the mid-1550’s turned over the apprehension and trial of suspects in the most important criminal cases to members of the local nobility.
Devastating raids carried out in the first half of the 16th century by the Kazan and Crimean khanates, which were supported by the Ottoman Empire, posed a serious threat to Russia’s security. After a bitter struggle the Russian state managed to conquer the Kazan Khanate in 1552 and the Astrakhan Khanate in 1556 and annex their territory. The Greater Nogai also recognized the authority of Moscow. The capture of Kazan influenced the historical development of Bashkiria, which was incorporated into Russia. The inclusion of the peoples of the Middle Volga Region and the Southern Urals in the Russian state represented a historically progressive step. Russia’s annexation of the area along the entire length of the Volga also met the vital economic needs of the state. Abatis lines were erected in the south; the boundary of the state was moved south of the Oka, and the settlement of the chernozem steppes of central Russia took place. Opportunities opened up for developing the resources of the Urals and Siberia. Circa 1581, Ermak undertook a campaign in Siberia. The Siberian Khanate was conquered in 1598. In Siberia, Tiumen’ was founded in 1586, Tobol’sk in 1587, Mangazeia in 1601, and Tomsk in 1604.
Efforts at uniting the Russian lands in the west involved a struggle with the Polish-Lithuanian state, which ruled the Ukrainian and Byelorussian lands. The German knightly Livonian Order also presented a serious obstacle, since it closed off outlets to the Baltic coast. The Livonian War of 1558–83 was undertaken by Ivan IV with the aim of capturing the Baltic region and giving Russia an outlet to the Baltic Sea. The Livonian Order disintegrated under the attacks of the Russian troops, but Russia was unable to win the war. Russia was opposed by Sweden and by Lithuania and Poland, which united to form the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Rzeczpospolita). The Baltic region fell under the sway of these states.
The growing strength of the nobility in the 1550’s made it necessary for the tsar to struggle resolutely against the economic and political privileges of the feudal aristocracy and more effectively suppress the resistance of the popular masses. The domestic political struggle took on a brutal character. From 1565 to the 1570’s Ivan IV sought to break the resistance of the feudal aristocracy and gain absolute autocratic power. The oprichnina—the aggregate of policies and measures instituted toward this end—was also directed against the antifeudal uprisings of the popular masses. The balance of power among the classes shifted as a result of the struggle: the feudal aristocracy was weakened, and the service nobility—tried and true supporters of Russian autocracy—gained in influence.
These circumstances, together with the economic crisis generated by the protracted Livonian War and the oprichnina, led to an expansion of the rights of the pomeshchiki (fief holders) and the complete enserfment of the toiling population on both privately held and state lands. In the 1580’s and 1590’s the government implemented measures designed to tie the peasant more closely to the land; for example, the “forbidden years”—temporary suspensions of the peasant’s right to change owners on St. George’s Day that soon became permanent throughout the country—were introduced, and a ukase was published that established a five-year statute of limitations for finding and recovering runaway peasants. As a result, serfdom became the prevailing form of feudal relations, and Russia became a feudal-serf state.
Under Tsar Fedor Ivanovich (ruled 1584–98), Boris Godunov gained absolute power as a result of a struggle among various boyar factions. Named tsar at the Zemskii Sobor of 1598, Godunov (ruled 1598–1605) and his government were unable to resolve the sociopolitical and economic crises of the late 16th and early 17th centuries.
By the end of the 16th century the Russian state encompassed 5.5 million sq km, an area ten times that of the Grand Principality of Moscow; the total population was relatively small, however, and was distributed unevenly. Among the most densely populated and economically most developed areas were the lands of the Zamoskovnyi Krai, located beyond the Oka. Settlement and economic development began in the territory south of the Oka (Dikoe Pole), in the Volga and Trans-Volga regions, and in Western Siberia. In addition to Russians, the country was inhabited in the second half of the 16th century by Ukrainians and Byelorussians and by such minor ethnic groups as Karelians, Veps, Nentsi, Lapps, Komi, Khanty, Mansi, Tatars, Bashkirs, Udmurts, Mari, Chuvash, Mordovians, Kumyks, Nogai, and Kabardins.
The development of Russian culture from the late 14th to the 16th century was closely linked with the tasks of unifying the country and with the struggle to throw off the Mongol-Tatar yoke. Literature took on a clearly topical character. Such works as the Zadonshchina and The Tale of the Rout of Mamai celebrated the heroic deeds and the patriotism of the Russians. The policies of the grand princes of Moscow were reflected in the all-Russian chronicle codices. Among chronicles compiled in the 16th century were the Voskresensk and Nikon chronicles. A debate on the nature of state power, the relation between church and state, and the role of the nobility was carried on in the writings of the monk Filofei, F. I. Karpov, Maksim Grek (Maxim the Greek), Ermolai-Erazm, and Ivan Peresvetov.
Antifeudal and anticlerical heretical movements assumed a broad scope during the period from the 14th to 16th centuries, primarily in Novgorod, Pskov, and Moscow. Their ideologists included Fedor Kuritsyn, Feodosii Kosoi, and Matvei Bashkin. The movements were suppressed with great cruelty by the church and by the secular authorities. Outstanding achievements of Russian culture in this period include the paintings of such artists as Andrei Rublev, Theophanes the Greek, and Dionisii; the buildings of the Moscow Kremlin, which were erected with the help of Italian masters in the late 15th and early 16th centuries; the Voznesenie Church (1532) in Kolomenskoe; and St. Basil’s Cathedral (mid-16th century) in Red Square. The printing of books, which began in 1553, came under the direction of Ivan Fedorov in 1564. Numerous works were created by Russian masters of applied art and Russian founders, notably the Tsar Cannon, cast by Andrei Chokhov.
In the early 17th century class contradictions became greatly exacerbated in the Russian state, and the struggle among the feudal lords intensified. New difficulties arose in Russia’s relations with other countries. Popular discontent led to the Peasant War of the early 17th century. A mass uprising of peasants and kholopy (bondmen), led by Khlopko, began in 1603 in the central districts of the country. An imposter, the First False Dmitrii (ruled 1605–06), left the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and crossed into Russian territory in the fall of 1604. He traveled through the areas caught up in the peasant disturbances and, enjoying the support of the people and some feudal lords, was enthroned in Moscow in 1605. The First False Dmitrii was killed on May 17, 1606, during an uprising organized by the boyars and supported by the population of the capital; a puppet of the boyars, Vasilii Ivanovich Shuiskii (ruled 1606–10), became tsar.
The greatest upsurge in the struggle of the popular masses came during the peasant uprising under the leadership of 1.1. Bolotnikov. The rival factions of feudal lords within the country, as well as external forces—the Polish-Lithuanian and Swedish feudal lords—attempted to exploit the popular movement to advance their own interests. By using their puppets, including the Second False Dmitrii, and subsequently by engaging in open intervention, the Polish-Lithuanian feudal lords captured Moscow in 1610 and part of European Russia; the Swedes took Novgorod Land.
The popular masses, led by the service nobility and the commercial-industrial elite of several cities, rose against the interventionists. The First Volunteer Corps was formed in 1611, followed by the Second Volunteer Corps, led by Minin and Pozharskii. Supported by the patriotically inclined population, the Second Volunteer Corps (1611–12) drove the interventionists from Moscow and reestablished the Russian state. The Zemskii Sobor of 1613 elected Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov (ruled 1613–45) tsar of Russia and created a government that brought the struggle against the interventionists to completion.
Lithuania, Byelorussia, the Ukraine, Moldavia, and the Baltic region from the 13th to the first half of the 17th century. The lands of the Lithuanian tribes also were invaded by the Livonian and Teutonic orders. The tribes defended their independence and by 1240 had created an early feudal state, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, whose first ruler was Mindaugas (ruled c. late 1230’s to 1263). The Lithuanian nationality was formed at this time. The Lithuanians routed the German knights at Saule (Šiauliai) in 1236 and defeated the Teutonic and Livonian orders at the battle of Lake Durbe in 1260.
In the 14th century, under such rulers as Gediminas (ruled 1316–41) and Algirdas (ruled 1345–77), the Grand Duchy of Lithuania became one of the most powerful states of Eastern Europe; it seized Russian, Ukrainian, and Byelorussian lands. The need to resist German aggression (the knights of the Teutonic and Livonian orders carried out some 100 military campaigns in Lithuania between 1340 and 1410) resulted in the Krewo Union of 1385, by which the Lithuanian grand duke, Jagaila (Polish, Jagietto), and the Polish queen, Jadwiga, married in 1386 and united their two states under Jagaila’s rule. Polish-Lithuanian-Russian troops (including Ukrainians and Byelorussians) routed the Teutonic Order at the battle of Tannenberg (also known as the battle of Grunwald) in 1410 and put an end to its aggression in the south and east.
The Krewo Union made it easier for Polish magnates and members of the szlachta (nobility) to encroach on the Lithuanian, Byelorussian, and Ukrainian lands. The feudal lords, led by Grand Duke Vytautas (Vitovt, ruled 1392–1430), sought to preserve Lithuania as a state, and Poland was forced to recognize the independence of Lithuania. Thenceforth, the members of the Jagiellonian dynasty were simultaneously grand dukes of Lithuania and kings of Poland. In 1569, under the Union of Lublin, Poland and Lithuania became a single state: the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, or Rzeczpospolita.
The Grand Duchy of Lithuania, taking advantage of the desire of the southern Russian lands to throw off the Mongol-Tatar yoke, seized the Chernigov-Severskii region in the 1350’s, Podolia and the Kiev region (including the Pereiaslav region) in the 1360’s, and most of Volyn’. Poland took Galicia in 1349, subsequently lost it, and recaptured it for good in 1387; Poland seized part of western Volyn’ circa 1377. Northern Bucovina had passed to the Principality of Moldavia by the early 14th century. Transcarpathia, which had been taken during the 11th century by the Hungarian Kingdom, remained under foreign rule.
The Ukrainians, who found themselves under the domination of the states mentioned above, long shared the history of the peoples neighboring the Ukraine. In 1410 the Byelorussians and Ukrainians fought heroically alongside the Polish-Lithuanian troops against the German knights in the battle of Tannenberg. They resisted Ottoman aggression by serving in the Hungarian Army and fought to repulse Tatar raids together with the Russians and Moldavians. Under the difficult conditions of foreign domination, the Ukrainian lands, which were divided among various states, maintained their ties with the Russian lands. The formation of the Ukrainian nationality was essentially completed in the 15th century.
The economic development of the Ukraine in the 15th and 16th centuries was accompanied by an increase in the number of large farms—folwarks, which the Polish-Lithuanian feudal lords created by seizing peasant lands. Increased feudal exploitation touched off popular uprisings, such as the peasant disturbances in Galicia and northern Bucovina from 1490 to 1492 led by Mukha and the peasant rebellion in Transcarpathia in 1514 led by Gyórgy Dózsa. The late 15th century saw the first in a series of invasions of Galicia and Podolia by Turkish and Tatar forces.
The Ukrainian cossacks played a major role in the liberation struggle of the Ukrainian people and in defending the Ukraine against enemy invasions. The cossack headquarters, the Zaporozh’e Sech’, was established beyond the Dnieper rapids in the 16th century. For the Ukrainian and Byelorussian peoples, the oppression of serfdom was compounded by national and religious oppression. The cossacks of the Zaporozh’e Sech’ became the primary military force in the national liberation struggle of the people of the Ukraine, which experienced an upsurge in the late 16th century. The first major uprising in the Ukraine broke out in
Figure 2. Battle of Tannenberg of 1410. Engraving from the Chronicle of M. Bielski, late 16th-century edition.Figure 3. Riga. Engraving from the Cosmographia of Sebastian Münster, 1548 edition.1591. The peasants of the Kiev region, Podolia, and Volyn’ were supported by the registered cossacks—those listed by the government of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as being in service to the state—under K. Kosinskii. A larger uprising began in 1594, with the registered cossacks being led by G. Loboda and the unregistered cossacks by S. Nalivaiko. It spread to certain parts of Byelorussia and was not suppressed until 1596. Large-scale peasant and cossack uprisings also took place in 1625,1630, 1635,1637, and 1638.
In Byelorussia, the population grew substantially, and the area of cultivated land increased in the 13th and 14th centuries. In the second half of the 13th century the Lithuanian grand dukes seized the feudal principalities of western Rus’. The western Russian lands became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania at the beginning of the 14th century. The formation of the Byelorussian nationality began at this time. As the feudal lords seized communal lands, feudal landownership increased in Byelorussia in the 15th and 16th centuries. In 1447 the grand duke of Lithuania, Kazimieras (Casimir) IV, granted a charter banning the transfer of private peasants to the estates of the grand duke. The folwarkcorvée system of farming began spreading in the late 15th century. In the mid-16th century a cadastre known as the voloka measurement increased the plowland of the lords and the corvée obligations of the peasants. Growing numbers of peasants ran away from their pomeshchiki in the 15th and 16th centuries.
Over a period beginning in the late 14th century such cities in Byelorussia as Brest, Slutsk, and Polotsk established self-government, based on the Magdeburg law, that was independent of the grand duke’s rule. In the late 15th and 16th centuries artisans organized into guilds.
After the Union of Lublin, the Polish throne, magnates, the Catholic Church, and the szlachta sought to make the Orthodox Church of Byelorussia and the Ukraine subordinate to the Catholic Church. In 1579, Jesuits who had come to Lithuania and Byelorussia founded a Jesuit academy in Vilnius. In 1596 at a synod in Brest the Uniate Church was declared the sole legal church.
The further entrenchment of serfdom and the growing influence of Polish Catholicism engendered fierce resistance on the part of the people. Peasants led by Matiusha and Golyi laid waste the estates of the pomeshchiki in the Mogilev area in Byelorussia in 1590. An uprising of the artisans of Mogilev broke out in June 1606 and continued for four years. In November 1623 the burghers of Vitebsk were driven to revolt by the coercive measures of the Uniate archbishop of Polotsk, I. Kuntsevich. In the 1630’s and 1640’s revolts took place in various Byelorussian cities, notably Drogichin and Minsk.
In Moldavia, an independent feudal state formed in the 1350’s: the Principality of Moldavia. The Kingdom of Hungary drove the Mongol-Tatars out of Moldavia in the first half of the 14th century and occupied the region. In 1359, Moldavia threw off the rule of the Hungarian feudal lords. In the course of its ethnic development, the Moldavian nationality, which completed its formation about this time, had become distinct from the general mass of Vlachs. Slavic tribes, primarily South and East Slavs, also played a role in its formation. The Principality of Moldavia encompassed the lands between the Dnestr and the Prut, along with Bucovina and the northeastern part of what is now Rumania.
In the late 15th century Ottoman troops invaded Moldavia. The Moldavian hospodar Stephen III the Great routed the Ottoman Army at Vaslui in 1475, but the country remained under threat of enslavement. Poland initiated hostilities against Moldavia in 1497. Interference by the Russian state prevented the Lithuanian feudal lords from joining the struggle. The Polish troops were routed by the Moldavians at the Koz’min (Cosmin) Forest.
In the early 16th century Moldavia fell under the sway of the Ottoman Empire. On numerous occasions the Moldavian people rose up against the Turkish aggressors and their own feudal lords. The peasants resisted enserfment and the plundering of communal lands. The largest uprisings took place in 1437,1490–92, and 1514. In the second half of the 16th century Moldavia, which remained under the Ottoman yoke, suffered cruel exploitation and devastation. The national liberation struggle of the Moldavian people was supported by the Zaporozh’e Cossacks. Serfdom was given formal legal expression in Moldavia by V. Lupu’s Law Code of 1646, which put an end to the movement of peasants from one owner to another.
Over a period beginning in the 13th century, the peoples of the Baltic region were ruled by German aggressors. The masters of the Livonian Order and the archbishops of Riga erected stone fortresses, or burgs, in the Baltic region that became the centers of feudal-military rule. The Catholic Church maintained its power over the feudal lands and interfered in their domestic affairs. Cities, in which power belonged to the wealthy German burghers, developed rapidly from the 14th to 16th centuries, especially Riga and Tallinn. The cities of the Baltic region carried on an extensive foreign trade with Lithuania, the Russian lands, and Western Europe. Increased feudal exploitation led to popular revolts, the most serious being the St. George’s Night Uprising of 1343–45. By the mid-16th century, peasants with little or no land had been fully enserfed. The formation of the Latvian and Estonian nationalities was completed by the 16th century.
The protracted struggle between the Livonian Order and the Archbishopric of Riga, along with the internecine conflicts of the feudal lords, prevented the creation of centralized states in the Baltic region. The Livonian War of 1558–83, a turning point in the history of the Baltic region, resulted in the disintegration of the Livonian Order and the distribution of the Baltic territories among Sweden, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and Denmark.
As a result of wars between Denmark and Sweden, notably the Seven Years’ War of the North (1563–70) and the Kalmar war (1611–13), Sweden extended its holdings in the Baltic region. It absorbed eastern Latvia (Vidzeme), including Riga, in 1629 and the Estonian islands, including Saaremaa, in 1645. Latgalia, along with its vassal the Duchy of Courland, remained a possession of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In the 17th century land cultivation in Swedish Estonia (Estland) and Swedish Latvia (Livland) became increasingly oriented toward production for the market. Estland and Livland were known as the granary of Sweden. Considerable grain was exported, primarily to Holland. Craft guilds were organized in such cities as Riga, Revel (Tallinn), and Narva. In addition to the German guilds, Riga had 20 Latvian guilds.
Transcaucasia, the Northern Caucasus, the Volga Region, the Ural Region, Siberia, Middle Asia, and Kazakhstan from the 13th to the first half of the 17th century. Several independent feudal states were formed in Georgia and Azerbaijan in the 14th and 15th centuries; they struggled continually against the aggression of the Ottoman Empire and Iran. The Kartli, Kakhetian, and Imeretian kingdoms and the Samtskhe-Saatabago Principality arose in Georgia in the late 15th century. The political disintegration of feudal Georgia continued in the 16th and early 17th centuries: the Mingrelian Principality, Abkhazia, and the Guria Principality, all of which enjoyed de facto independence, became separate from the Imeretian Kingdom.
Azerbaijan remained under the rule of the Hulaguids, a Mongol-Tatar dynasty, until the 1360’s and 1370’s. It was invaded by Tamerlane (Timur) in the late 14th century. New state formations arose in Azerbaijan in the 15th century: Kara-Koyunlu and Ak-Koyunlu. The state of the shirvanshahs (shahs of Shirvan) attained considerable power.
Armenia was invaded in the 14th and 15th centuries by various peoples, notably the Mongol-Tatars, tribes of nomadic Turkmens, and the Kurds. The Armenian state structure was destroyed, and the country devastated.
In the 16th century Transcaucasia suffered internecine conflicts and foreign invasions. In 1555, Georgia and Armenia were divided between the Ottoman Empire and Iran. As a result, the relations of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan with Russia became closer. In 1587, Alexander II, the king of Kakhetia, acknowledged himself and his country vassals of Rus’, but the unification of Georgia with Russia did not, to all intents and purposes, take place. The struggle between the Ottoman Empire and Iran, which entailed countless sacrifices, substantially delayed the socioeconomic, political, and cultural development of the peoples of Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. After the Irano-Turkish wars of 1602–39, all Azerbaijan, eastern Armenia, and Eastern Georgia were under Iranian rule. Western Armenia and Western Georgia became part of the Ottoman Empire, but Georgia retained some independence in handling its domestic problems. Harsh political, social, and national-religious oppression caused the peoples of Georgia and Armenia to rise up and struggle for their liberation; for example, in 1625 a revolt led by G. Saakadze took place in Kartli.
The Golden Horde—the state of the Mongol-Tatars—was divided into uluses belonging to the sons of Jochi, Genghis Khan’s eldest son. The uluses recognized the supreme authority of Batu. The state attained its greatest military strength under Khan Dzhanibek (ruled 1342–57).
In the 1260’s the state formation ruled by Khaidu Khan, which included territory in the west as far as the Amu Darya and in the east as far as the Ob’ and Khangai rivers, was formed from portions of the uluses of Jagatai and Ogadai. When Mongol uluses and their appanages were created in Southern Siberia and Middle Asia, Kymak-Kirghiz tribes were displaced from the region along the upper course of the Ob’ to the area between the Irtysh and Hi rivers. As the tribes spread throughout the Tien-Shan from the 13th to 15th centuries, the formation of the Kirghiz nationality began, a process that was completed in the 16th century. With the disintegration of Khaidu’s state in the 1340’s, the Kirghiz feudal-tribal association enjoyed de facto independence until the late 16th century. From the late 15th to mid-16th centuries the Kirghiz people waged a tenacious struggle to prevent the Mongols from reestablishing their rule in the Tien-Shan. The formation of the Turkmen nationality, which began in the 13th and 14th centuries, was essentially completed in the 15th century.
By the 1340’s, Jagatai’s ulus had virtually disintegrated. Part of it—Mavera-un-Nahr—became the nucleus of a powerful new state formation, the Timurid state. Tamerlane created a vast but unstable feudal power through his numerous campaigns of conquest. The state included Mavera-un-Nahr, Khwarazm, Khorasan, Afghanistan, and part of Iran. In Samarkand—the capital of Tamerlane’s state—and other cities remarkable buildings were erected through the involuntary labor of architects, builders, and artists who had been resettled from the countries conquered by Tamerlane. Uprisings against Tamerlane broke out repeatedly in Khwarazm and in such cities as Samarkand. Tamerlane’s descendants, the Timurids, continued to rule in Middle Asia and Khorasan until 1507. Small-scale commodity production reached its maximum development in medieval Asia in the late 15th and early 16th centuries.
The Uzbek Khanate, which became separate from the Golden Horde, encompassed the territory from the Aral Sea and Iaik River in the west to the Irtysh in the east and the Tobol in the north. The population of the Uzbek Khanate bore the collective designation “Uzbek Kazakhs,” a name lacking a clear ethnographic sense.
Civil wars and increased feudal exploitation caused the Kazakh clans to move to western Semirech’e. The Kazakh Khanate arose in Semirech’e in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. The long process of the formation of the Kazakh nationality, whose principal components were local tribes that belonged to early feudal states, was completed by the beginning of the 16th century. Under Khan Kasym (ruled 1511–23), the Kazakh Khanate became stronger, its borders were expanded, and its population increased. In the 16th century it divided into the Great Horde (Semirech’e), the Middle Horde (central Kazakhstan), and the Little Horde (western Kazakhstan). The authority of the Genghisid khans and sultans was strengthened in the late 16th century. A Kazakh mission was sent to Moscow in 1594 to establish friendly relations with Russia. Pasture stock raising remained the leading branch of the economy in Kazakhstan in the 16th and 17th centuries; feudal relations developed slowly.
Members of the Sheibanid dynasty and the Uzbek aristocracy began playing a major role in Middle Asia in the 16th century. They were joined by part of the previous elite, and the land was gradually redistributed. The Sheibanids attempted to strengthen the country’s economy and improve the irrigation system; at the beginning of the 16th century they carried out a monetary reform. The Bukhara and Khiva khanates arose in Middle Asia in the 16th century. At the end of the 16th century, the Sheibanid holdings were unified by Abdullah-Khan II (reigned in Bukhara beginning in 1557). This step was conducive to economic development. Nomads adopted a settled way of life, and land cultivation and irrigation developed. A number of cities that had been destroyed by the Mongol-Tatars, such as Samarkand and Bukhara, again became centers of trade and handicrafts. Moreover, commercial and diplomatic relations with Russia were established. In the 17th century, however, civil wars, nomad attacks, and the shifting of important caravan routes retarded the development of the peoples of Middle Asia.
Russia in the 17th century. The economic ruin suffered by the Russian state in the first quarter of the 17th century reached dangerous proportions. Enormous tracts of cultivated land were abandoned, as much as 60 percent of the land in some districts. The government responded with measures designed to put an end to the economic collapse and further reinforce serfdom; these included the general description and patrolling of the deserted regions and the apprehension and return of runaway posadskie liudi and peasants.
Under tsars Mikhail Fedorovich and Aleksei Mikhailovich (ruled 1645–76) the Privy Duma, or Secret Duma, made up of reliable persons invited by the tsar, functioned in addition to the Boyar Duma. Patriarch Filaret, the tsar’s father, was the de facto ruler from 1619 to 1633. The role of the prikaz officials—the d’iaki and pod’iachie (lowest-level civil servants)—continued to grow in the first half of the 17th century. All military, judicial, and financial power in the provinces was concentrated in the hands of the voevody (military governors). In the late 16th and early 17th centuries the role of the nobility, which comprised the bulk of the dominant class of feudal lords, gained in importance.
Russia’s relations with other countries in this period were marked by complexity. Under the Peace of Stolbovo of 1617, Sweden returned Novgorod and the surrounding area and retained the Izhora Land, which included the Neva River and an outlet to the Gulf of Finland. Under the Deulino Truce of 1618 the Smolensk Land went to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. During the Russo-Polish War of 1632–34 an attempt was made to regain the lands taken by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth; despite initial successes, Russia lost the war: the Russian Army, encircled at Smolensk, surrendered. Under the Polianovka Peace of 1634 the Poles returned to Russia only Serpeisk and the surrounding district and met the Russian demand that Wladyslaw IV renounce his claim to the Russian throne.
With great difficulty Russia managed to hold back the incursions of the Crimean khan. In the first half of the 17th century at least 200,000 Russians were taken captive and sold by the Crimean Tatars in the slave markets of Constantinople. The Belgorod line—a system of defensive structures designed to turn back the Tatar raids from the south—was completed by the late 1640’s. The Don Cossacks captured the Turkish fortress at Azov in 1637 and held it for five years, withstanding a siege mounted by Turkish-Tatar forces.
Intensive colonization of Siberia—the annexation and opening up of its eastern regions—began in the early 17th century. The Eniseisk ostrog (fortified settlement) was founded in 1619; it was followed by the similar settlements of Krasnoiarsk (1628), Bratsk (1631), and Yakutsk (1632). Russian zemleprokhodtsy (explorers) reached the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk in 1639.
Tracing the genesis of capitalism in Russia, Lenin noted that “the modern period of Russian history (approximately from the seventeenth century) is characterized by the actual amalgamation of all . . . regions, lands and principalities into one whole. This amalgamation . . . was brought about by the increasing exchange among regions, the gradually growing circulation of commodities, and the concentration of the small local markets into a single, all-Russian market. Since the leaders and masters of this process were the merchant capitalists, the creation of these national ties was nothing else than the creation of bourgeois ties” (Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 1, pp. 153–54).
In the 17th century the first signs of the decline and dissolution of the feudal system were manifested in Russia, and capitalist relations began developing. The country entered the period of the transition from feudalism to capitalism, a process that took more than two centuries and whose initial stage was characterized by the final legal codification of serfdom, the concentration of small local markets into a single nationwide market, the rise of absolutism, and a bitter class struggle.
By the mid-17th century, agriculture and handicrafts had recovered from the damage wrought by foreign intervention. Market ties were reestablished and became more extensive, urban handicrafts production was transformed on a massive scale into small-scale commodity production, certain Russian cities specialized further in particular handicrafts, entrepreneurship began developing among the nobility, and the first manufactures were organized. The manufactures relied primarily on manual labor, most of it supplied by enserfed peasants; water-driven engines were used in only a few plants.
Simple capitalist cooperation and manufacture underwent development in river transport and salt-making and appeared for the first time in distilling, the production of leather goods (notably Russia leather), rope spinning, and metalworking. A bourgeoisie, consisting of the stratum of capitalist merchants, began taking shape. The first metallurgical and glass works were built with state support.
The ties between small local markets were strengthened, and a nationwide market began forming. City and village marketplaces, bazaars, and fairs multiplied. The marketplaces in the largest cities, such as Moscow and Yaroslavl, and the Makar’ev Fair became nationally important. Moscow, the capital, became the center of the developing nationwide market. The Sven’ Fair, near Briansk, played an important role in the development of commodity exchange with the Ukraine; the Lebedian’ Fair, in what is now Lipetsk Oblast, was important for trade with the Don region; and the Irbit Fair, in what is now Sverdlovsk Oblast, played a major role in trade with Siberia.
Domestic interregional trade in such commodities as grain and salt became a principal source for the formation of merchant capital; foreign trade remained the main source, however. In Arkhangel’sk, Astrakhan, Novgorod, Pskov and other centers for foreign trade, Russian merchants purveyed domestic goods, chiefly hemp, flax, Russia leather, tallow, kholst (a coarse fabric), and furs. In the interior cities they sold goods from Western Europe (woolen cloth, grape wine, copper, tin, and paper) and Eastern Europe (silk and cotton fabrics).
In the countryside, where at least 96 percent of the population lived, a natural-patriarchal economy was dominant, usually based on land cultivation. Increases in agricultural output were achieved primarily by opening up new lands in the central and, especially, the frontier areas: the southern districts of Russia, the Middle Volga Region, the Ural Region, and Siberia. Growing demand for grain, most of it used in distilling, and rising demand for flax and hemp, especially for export, contributed to a substantial increase in the sale of commodities produced by land cultivation.
The crown and pomest’e lands gradually adapted to commodity-money relations. As before, industry developed primarily through the growth of handicraft and small-scale commodity production and, on this basis, further specialization in particular branches of industry. In the 17th and early 18th centuries, craftsmen and rural commodity producers became concentrated in the old cities, and new urban industrial centers were founded in European Russia, such as Simbirsk in 1648.
The posadskie liudi pressed for the elimination of the “white” slobody, settlements owned by feudal lords that remained free from state taxes until 1649–52; they also sought to abolish the privileges enjoyed by the gosti and the torgovye liudi (merchants and tradesmen not of the gosti) of the Gostinaia Sotnia and Sukonnaia Sotnia and to put an end to the tarkhany (deeds extending trading privileges to the large monasteries). They protested against oppressive taxation and, often in concert with the strel’tsy and other sluzhilye liudi po priboru (servitors by contract), rose against the tyranny of the authorities. Higher taxes and increased exploitation of the townspeople resulted in the Moscow Uprising of 1648, the Novgorod Uprising of 1650, and the Pskov Uprising of 1650. Between 1648 and 1650 uprisings also broke out in cities
Figure 4. View of the Moscow Kremlin from Red Square. Drawing from the album of Augustin Meyerberg, 1661–62.in the south (Kozlov, Kursk, and Voronezh), the Pomor’e (Ustiug Velikii and Sol’-Vychegodskaia), the Ural Region, and Siberia.
In response to the exacerbation of the class struggle, the government of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich published a collection of laws, the Sobornoe Ulozhenie (Assembly Code) of 1649, under which privately owned peasants, dvortsovye krest’iane (peasants belonging to the tsar and his family), and state peasants were deprived once and for all of the vykhod krest’ianskii, the right of a peasant to leave his master. In addition, the statute of limitations on recovering a fugitive peasant was lifted entirely. Landowners were given the right to control the property and person of the peasant. The formation of the state system of serfdom had now been completed.
Between 1649 and 1652 the white slobody were made part of the posad (merchants’ and artisans’ quarter) and the government reaffirmed the ban forbidding the posadskie liudi to move from one city to another without authorization; in addition, they were not allowed to “pledge” themselves—to become personally dependent on feudal lords and thereby evade a substantial portion of their service obligations to the state. Trade was declared the privilege of the posadskie liudi, and peasants were forbidden to have shops in the cities.
A state monopoly on the trade in grain spirits (vodka) was established in 1652. The government unified the customs system under the Commercial Statute of 1653, which eliminated many petty levies that had hindered the development of interregional trade. The New Commercial Statute of 1667 barred foreigners from trading in the interior cities of Russia.
The potential for a growth in state revenues was limited, however, since most of the land and the majority of the peasants belonged to the church and to secular feudal lords. The heaviest tax burden was borne by comparatively small strata of the population—the posadskie liudi and the peasants of Siberia and northern European Russia, who were not bound. In the 1670’s their taxes per household were approximately two to three times greater than those of the monastyrskie krest’iane (monasterial peasants) and four to six times greater than those of the pomeshchich’i krest’iane (peasants belonging to the pomeshchiki). The lot of such privately owned peasants was no easier, since their payments and service obligations to the feudal owners had been increased.
Complex processes of socioeconomic development and increased feudal oppression led to an exacerbation of social contradictions. The peasants and posadskie liudi fled in large numbers to the south (where they swelled the ranks of the cossack population), the Ural Region, and Siberia. The migration of considerable numbers of peasants and artisans to the eastern regions of the country had the objective effect of fostering the development of those territories. Disturbed at the mass flight of peasants and at the shortage of labor power, the landlords demanded that the government reinforce serfdom. At the insistence of the nobility, commissions charged with the recovery of fugitives were established beginning in the 1650’s. The rapid growth of the feudal-serf economy based on private ownership continued, primarily through the mass transfer (distribution) of state and crown lands, together with the peasants living on them, to the possession of serf-owning feudal lords. By the 1670’s about 80 percent of the tax-paying population was the property of the tsar, the boyars, noblemen, monasteries, and clerical feudal lords.
In 1647 an uprising broke out in the Ukraine, which was suffering under the oppressive rule of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The uprising developed into the War of Liberation of the Ukrainian People of 1648–54. Peasant and cossack troops led by Bogdan Khmel’nitskii won a series of victories over the Poles. The Ukraine was reunited with Russia to form a single state through the heroic struggle of the fraternal Ukrainian and Byelorussian people’s, who were supported by the Russian people. Representatives of the Ukrainian people swore fidelity to Russia at the Pereiaslav rada (council), held in January 1654.
The consolidation of the Ukraine with Russia brought on a war with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, during which the Russian, Ukrainian, and Byelorussian peoples joined forces. Smolensk was returned to Russia, but the war was complicated by a conflict with Sweden (the Russo-Swedish War of 1656–58) and the Crimean Khanate’s intervention in the affairs of the Ukraine. The war with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth ended with the Armistice of Andrusovo of 1667, under which the województwa (territories under military governors) of Smolensk and Chernigov passed to Russia, and the reunion of the Left-bank Ukraine with Russia was recognized.
P. Doroshenko, hetman of the Right-bank Ukraine, went over to the Russians, thereby touching off a war with the Ottoman Empire, which claimed the Ukraine. The war lasted from 1676 to 1681. The Russo-Ukrainian forces, who won several victories against a numerically superior enemy and who demonstrated their mettle in the defense of Chigirin, thwarted the aggressive designs of the Ottoman Empire. The war and the Turkish invasion of Central Europe in 1683 helped bring about the signing of the Eternal Peace of 1686, which provided a basis for relations between Russia and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Russia became part of an anti-Turkish coalition with Austria, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and Venice. The Crimean campaigns of 1687 and 1689, however, brought Russia no success and hastened the downfall of the government of Tsarevna Sofia. Peter I subsequently continued the struggle against the Ottoman Empire and the Crimean Khanate with the Azov campaigns of 1695–96. Under the Constantinople Peace Treaty of 1700, Russia obtained Azov and no longer had to pay a humiliating tribute to the Crimean khan.
The state system, above all the autocratic power of the tsar, grew stronger and gradually acquired the character of an absolute monarchy. The rise of absolutism in Russia was facilitated by the further weakening of the boyar aristocracy and the church, the strengthening of the pomest’e nobility, and the growing importance of the cities in the country’s economic life. The main cause of its rise, however, was the vested interest of the entire class of feudal lords in maintaining and strengthening their dominant position in the face of a mighty upsurge in the struggle of the popular masses against serfdom.
The rise of absolutism was accompanied by the withering away of the institutions characteristic of the estate monarchy. Beginning in the mid-17th century the zemskie sobory were convoked less frequently. Patriarch Nikon’s attempts to put the church above the state resulted in the church’s becoming even more subordinate to secular authority. As early as 1649 the government restricted the growth of church landownership by imposing a ban on the donation of land to the monasteries. There was a marked decline in the importance of the Boyar Duma, whose membership came to include persons not of noble birth. A. L. Ordin-Nashchokin and (from 1671) A. S. Matveev, men from outside the aristocracy who rose through their own talent, played a leading role in the government in the 1660’s and 1670’s. The Privy Duma became more important; the Prikaz Tainykh Del (Bureau of Secret Affairs), which engaged in political investigations and dealt with cases involving especially important crimes against the state, was established, and regiments organized along foreign lines were formed.
In the second half of the 17th century heightened social contradictions resulted in numerous and varied manifestations of popular discontent. The Moscow Uprising of 1662 was a mass popular movement. Large popular revolts took place along the Don in the second half of the 1660’s: Vasilii Us’ march on Tula in 1666 and S. T. Razin’s Caspian campaign of 1667–69. They developed into the Peasant War of 1670–71, led by Razin. This movement drew its strength mainly from the peasants, but the nucleus of the insurgent military force was formed by Don Cossacks and strel’tsy from the cities of the Lower Volga Region. The Russian peasants and townspeople were joined in the uprising by members of the non-Russian peoples of the Volga Region. The people’s war encompassed an enormous area in southern and southeastern European Russia. The movement was brutally suppressed by the tsarist government, which dealt harshly with the insurgents.
A manifestation of the social contradictions in the country was a schism (raskol) that took place in the Russian church as a result of a mounting crisis in the medieval world view and the official church’s loss of its monopoly over the spiritual life of society. Patriarch Nikon, with the support of the tsarist government, attempted to establish a single version for each of the various prayer books and to reform church ritual; he was resisted by the adherents of the “ancient piety,” including a substantial section of the peasantry and posadskie liudi. The bold actions of the schism’s leading figures, notably the archpriest Avvakum, reflected a spontaneous protest of the popular masses against growing feudal oppression. At the same time, the ideological tenets of the schismatics (raskol’niki), or Old Believers, were profoundly conservative. The Old Believers were implacably hostile to everything new, especially foreign culture; mass self-immolations took place among them. The antifeudal tendencies of the Old Believer movement became stronger in the 1660’s and 1670’s, and its insurgent features became manifest, notably in the Solovetskii Uprising of 1668–76; in addition, Old Believers took part in the Moscow Uprising of 1682.
The brief reign of Tsar Fedor Alekseevich (1676–82) was accompanied by a bitter struggle among the factions at court. An attempt to carry out reforms designated to further strengthen absolutism, including the introduction of a household tax in 1679, the abolition of the mestnichestvo system in 1682, and the centralization of the state machinery, exacerbated the conflicts among the elite and the discontent among the lower orders of the cities. Taking advantage of the Moscow Uprising of 1682, which broke out after the death of the tsar, Tsarevna Sofia Alekseevna (ruled 1682–89) came to power, having been officially proclaimed regent until the tsars Ivan and Peter, her younger brothers, attained their majority. Sofia Alekseevna’s government made small concessions that benefited the posady, and it relaxed the government’s efforts to search for runaway peasants, thereby provoking the discontent of the nobility. In 1689 conflict between two factions of boyars and noblemen brought down the government of Sofia and her favorite, V. V. Golitsyn; power passed to Peter I the Great (tsar 1682–1725, emperor 1721–25).
By the end of the 17th century, the Left-bank Ukraine, the Volga Region, the Urals, and Siberia had been united with Russia. A serf system and, for non-Russian peoples, a regime of religious and national oppression were established in the annexed territories. Even under such conditions, however, the incorporation of the non-Russian peoples into Russia was a progressive step. The reunification of the Ukraine with Russia saved the Ukrainian people from ruinous Turkish-Tatar invasions and from national and religious oppression by the szlachta-dominated Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Catholic Church. When Russian peasants and cossacks moved to the Volga Region, the Urals, and Siberia, they brought with them centuries of experience in land cultivation and crafts, as well as new tools. Some regions that were incorporated into Russia experienced a marked acceleration of economic and social development. The unification of peoples into a single Russian state helped to strengthen the ties among them. The peoples of Russia went through the school of class struggle together and enriched one another’s culture.
The literacy rate in the cities grew substantially in the 17th century as the state administration expanded. Parish schools were established in some cities, and the residents of Kitai-Gorod, a district of Moscow, received permission in 1667 to open a “gymnasion.” The Slavonic-Greco-Latin Academy was founded in Moscow in 1687. As they opened up new areas of northeastern Asia and the Far East, such Russians as S. I. Dezhnev, V. D. Poiarkov, and E. P. Khabarov made extremely valuable geographic discoveries in Siberia; a number of descriptions, geographic maps, and atlases were produced, notably by S. U. Remezov. The expansion of trade and diplomatic relations brought forth works on foreign countries, such as N. G. Spafarii’s description of China. Knowledge was gradually accumulated in medicine, astronomy, mathematics, physics, and chemistry. The transition from early to modern literature began in the 17th century.
Russia in the first half of the 18th century; reforms of Peter the Great. After becoming sole ruler, Peter I displayed a profound grasp of the tasks facing Russia. His reforms, which were designed to bring Russia up to the level of the advanced countries of Western Europe, affected all areas of the state and social life. The Petrine reforms, which were a natural consequence of the entire historical development of the country, helped elevate the dominant class of landlord-nobles and fostered the growth of the commercial and manufacturing bourgeoisie. Peter I began by giving Russia a more active foreign policy. In the winter of 1695–96, in the course of the Azov campaigns, the construction of a fleet began in Voronezh. In 1697 and 1698 the tsar personally took part in the Great Embassy, a diplomatic mission abroad conceived with the purpose of strengthening the anti-Ottoman coalition and making a study of the international situation.
The sweeping plans for reform and the first steps toward their implementation required a great deal of money. The increasing burden of taxation and exploitation caused a number of uprisings; the most important was the strel’tsy uprising of 1698, which was brutally suppressed and which led, in particular, to the elimination of the strel’tsy as a branch of the army. Initially 27 infantry and two cavalry regiments were formed to replace the regiments of strel’tsy. A reform of municipal government was carried out in 1699. The tempo of reforms was accelerated by the Northern War of 1700–21, which began in failure for Russia (a defeat at Narva in 1700), and by the exacerbation of the class struggle.
The establishment of both large (manufactures) and small industrial enterprises, especially in industries supplying the military, expanded in the first quarter of the 18th century. Among the more than 200 production facilities built were metallurgical and metalworking manufactures, shipyards, and manufactures for the production of woolen cloth, sailcloth, and leather goods. The Urals became the country’s metallurgical center. New fortresses and cities were built, notably St. Petersburg, which was founded in 1703 and became the capital of Russia in 1712. The Vyshnii Volok Canal was dug, and construction of the Ladoga Canal began. The government turned over to the merchants some of the new production facilities already in operation and bestowed privileges and benefits on the owners of manufactures. The practice of assigning peasants to metallurgical works became widespread.
A system of compulsory military service in the regular army and the navy was instituted in the first years of the Northern War, thereby ensuring the continual reinforcement and growth of the armed forces. By 1725 the Russian Army, in addition to 40 infantry regiments (70,000 men), including the Preobrazhenskii and Semenovskii guards regiments, comprised 33 cavalry regiments (about 38,000 men), an artillery regiment, engineer troops, garrison troops, a land-militsiia (territorial army), with a total of 78,000 men, and irregular troops, such as cossacks and Kalmyks. Enlistment in the army and navy was for life. The officer corps was staffed essentially from the nobility.
Military educational institutions for the training of officers were established, such as the Navigation, Engineer, and Artillery schools and the Naval Academy. As early as 1702–04 the first ships for the Baltic Fleet were built at the Sias’, Olonets, and Luga shipyards. After the establishment of the Admiralty in St. Petersburg, various vessels, notably ships of the line, were added to the fleet. The procedures governing military service were set forth in the Army Regulations (introduced 1716) and the Navy Regulations (1720).
Peter’s reforms, especially the large construction projects and the creation and maintenance of a regular army and navy, were carried out by cruelly exploiting the working people. Forced labor was used extensively in the construction of St. Petersburg and in the building of fortresses and canals. New taxes were introduced, including taxes to support shipbuilding and taxes for the maintenance of dragoons, rekruty (conscripts and voluntary recruits), and construction workers.
As serfdom became more oppressive, increasing numbers of peasants and posadskie liudi fled: in the period covered by the first reviziia (census), 198,000 runaways were recovered. In addition, the class struggle was exacerbated, as evidenced by the Astrakhan Uprising of 1705–06, the Bulavin Revolt of 1707–09, and the Bashkir Uprising of 1705–11. The feudal-serf state harshly suppressed popular movements.
In order to strengthen the power of the state, the government carried out a reform of the central and local administration. In 1708 the country was divided into eight gubernii, or provinces: Moscow, Ingermanland (from 1710, St. Petersburg), Kiev, Azov, Smolensk, Kazan, Arkhangel’sk, and Siberia. Subsequently, the number was increased somewhat. In 1719 the provinces were divided into provintsii, or subprovinces. Each province was headed by a governor with absolute judicial, administrative, and financial power. The Boyar Duma and the prikazy were abolished and replaced by the Senate, established in 1711, and collegia. The Table of Ranks was introduced in 1722.
A poll tax (podushnaia podat’), levied on the entire male population of Russia, with the exception of the nobility and clergy, was introduced in 1724. The amount of total taxes increased twofold. In order to determine how many people should pay the poll tax, revizii were taken periodically. Kholopy (bondmen) were included in the tax-paying estate in 1720, and the formation of a single estate consisting of enserfed peasants, who numbered 3,176,000 males in the 1720’s, was completed. All rural residents inhabiting lands that did not belong to the pomeshchiki (the term by now had come to mean large-scale landowner) were declared to be state peasants; they included the lesser sluzhilye liudi of the southern districts, who performed military service and fulfilled a number of state obligations, the pashennye liudi (peasant cultivators) of Siberia, and the peasants of the Volga Region and the north who payed a tribute in kind (iasak). The state peasants were obliged to pay quitrent in addition to the poll tax. In 1724 male state peasants numbered 1,400,000. For the working population, the poll tax was a heavier burden than the household tax had been.
The various groups of the ruling class merged into a single estate, the nobility. Peter’s reforms strengthened the economic and political position of the nobility, gave greater power to the state, and officially codified absolutism. The patriarchate was abolished in 1721 and replaced by the Synod; the church was subordinated to the state. Russia was proclaimed an empire in 1721. Peter I, who initiated and took an active part in the reforms, proved himself an outstanding statesman and military figure. Although the reforms did not fundamentally change the institution of serfdom, their objective consequences—the growth of industry, trade, and the merchant class—contributed to the development of bourgeois elements closely linked to the absolutist state and to serfdom. By the end of the first quarter of the 18th century, Russia’s population reached 15.6 million.
As a result of the reforms, Russia achieved victory in the Northern War over Sweden, a powerful enemy. As early as 1702–04, Russian forces inflicted a number of defeats on the Swedes: they advanced to the Baltic coast, where they captured the mouth of the Neva in 1703 and Narva in 1704. The Russian Army won brilliant victories at the battle of Lesnaia in 1708 and the battle of Poltava in 1709, in which Charles XII, who had invaded Russian territory, was routed. In 1710, Russian troops captured Riga and Vyborg, thereby providing Russia with an outlet to the Baltic Sea.
The war against Sweden was complicated by the defeat of Russia’s allies (Denmark, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and Saxony) and their repeated failure to honor their obligations as allies, as well as by Turkey’s interference. The lack of success in the war against Turkey, which lasted from 1711 to 1713 and included the Prut Campaign of 1711, motivated the Russian government to conduct the war against Sweden more energetically and bring it to a successful conclusion. Russia captured most of Finland, and the recently created Baltic Fleet was victorious at Hangö in 1714 and at Granhamn Island in 1720. Under the Treaty of Nystadt (1721), Russia was given the Izhora Land, which had originally been Russian, and a substantial portion of the Baltic region: Estonia and northern Latvia.
The government of Peter I returned to the German landlords the estates that Sweden had confiscated in the late 17th century under the policy of reduction. In the Baltic region, it left intact the system of local self-government, in which the dominant position was occupied by the German nobility and, in the cities, the German merchant class. The class and social policies of tsarism did not differ in principle from previous policies that had been carried out in the region.
The economic development of Estonia and Latvia was long delayed by the dire consequences of the Northern War and of a plague epidemic in 1710 and 1711. Not until the second half of the 18th and early 19th centuries did cities begin to develop perceptibly, along with land cultivation geared toward the market; exports of grain and other agricultural commodities increased rapidly. The peasants fought tenaciously for their emancipation, thereby helping bring about the necessary conditions for the limitation of serfdom.
The Persian Campaign of 1722–23, undertaken by Peter I with the agreement of Georgia and Armenia, resulted in the incorporation into Russia of the western coast of the Caspian Sea and helped bring Russia and the peoples of Transcaucasia closer together. The weakening of Iran and Russia’s penetration of the Caucasus prompted intervention by the Ottoman Empire, which invaded Georgia. The Russian government was able to avoid war with the Turks, however, and concluded the Treaty of Constantinople of 1724, which demarcated the possessions of Russia and the Ottoman Empire in the Caucasus. Between 1732 and 1735, as Russo-Turkish relations deteriorated, the Russian government returned the lands along the Caspian Sea to Iran, with which it hoped to form an alliance.
Peter I surrounded himself with an array of talented associates, who included men of nonaristocratic origin as well as persons of noble birth; among these associates were B. P. Sheremetev, F. M. Apraksin, F. Iu. Romodanovskii, A. D. Menshikov, F. A. Golovin, G. I. Golovkin, P. P. Shafirov, and P. A. Tolstoi. As a result of its military and diplomatic victories in the first quarter of the 18th century, Russia was recognized as a great power.
Changes in socioeconomic and political life fostered cultural progress as well. They led to a diminution of the church’s role in the spiritual life of society and to the victory of secularism in education, literature, and art. A system of schools was established that comprised tsifirnye shkoly (“mathematical,” or “ciphering,” schools) and diocesan (eparkhial’nye) schools. In addition, vocational and professional education underwent development: the government founded military schools, medical schools, schools for workers in government offices, mining schools, and technical schools, notably the technical school at the Petrovskii Works.
Cultural relations with Western Europe were expanded: the government invited specialists from abroad to Russia and sent young noblemen to study in Europe. More books were published, especially pedagogical literature and books on mathematics and mechanics, such as L. F. Magnitskii’s Arithmetic. The Civil typeface was introduced in 1708, a new calender was instituted in 1700, and the first printed newspaper, Vedomosti (News), began publishing in 1703.
Works on politics and public affairs, including treatises by F. Prokopovich, resolutely supported the absolutist state and the unlimited power of the monarch. The writings of I. T. Pososhkov, notably On Poverty and Wealth, reflected the merchantry’s approval of the reforms and of absolute monarchy. Geography was enriched by new knowledge; the exploration of such regions as the Caspian Sea and adjacent territory, Eastern Siberia, and Kamchatka yielded cartographic works. Numerous mineral deposits were discovered, astronomical observations were made, a library and the Kunstkamera were founded in St. Petersburg, and in 1724 the Academy of Sciences was established.
In the second quarter of the 18th century, some regions of Russia experienced substantial increases in population as a result of migratory settlement. Growth was particularly marked in the south and in the Middle and Lower Volga regions, because of the development of grain production in these areas and the expansion of serfdom. The number of peasants belonging to pomeshchiki increased by a factor of 4.5 in Voronezh Province but by a factor of 90 in the northern Lower Volga Region, in the vicinity of Saratov. The introduction of the poll tax in 1724 and increases in the quitrent and corvée due the pomeshchik forced the peasants to increase their sales of grain, hemp, flax, and livestock products; after paying quitrent in cash to the serf-owning feudal lords, however, the peasants often were unable to pay the tax. Their arrears to the treasury rose to 5 million rubles between 1724 and 1742. The pomeshchiki established enterprises for the production of woolen cloth and sailcloth on their votchiny at which the peasants could work off the corvée; beginning in the 1750’s, metallurgical enterprises were established for the same purpose.
The number of metallurgical manufactures and manufactures producing woolen cloth, sailcloth, silk, paper, and glass grew relatively quickly; their development was encouraged by the state. In 1750, Russia had 72 ironworks and 29 copper smelteries. They produced 2 million poods (1 pood = 16.38 kg) of pig iron (as compared with 1.3 million poods for Great Britain) and 50,000 poods of copper.
Foreign trade doubled in value between 1726 and 1750, as a resuit
Figure 5. Turchaninov copper-smelting furnaces of the Polevskoi factories in the Urals (18th century)of increased exports, primarily of hemp, flax, Russia leather, linen, and iron, and the import of industrial goods, especially luxury goods in demand by the nobility and to some extent the merchantry. In particular, between 1726 and 1753 imports of silk fabrics increased by a factor of 30, and imports of cotton fabrics by a factor of 11. An important indication of the development of domestic trade and the domestic market was the elimination of internal tariffs in Russia and the Ukraine and the abolition of the customs border between Russia and the Ukraine.
Between 1725 and 1762 the government’s social policy was designed to strengthen the power of the pomeshchiki over the peasants. The feudal lords’ monopoly over the ownership of persons was strictly maintained. The state protected the entrepreneurial activities of the nobility from competition by the merchants. The nobility was granted a monopoly over distilling in 1754, and merchant-owned distilleries were closed down.
The government forbade merchants to have dvorovye liudi (domestic serfs) and limited their opportunities to staff their manufactures with serf workers, including (in the 1740’s and 1750’s) those who were purchased. In 1762 the government declared that owners of manufactures who were not of the nobility could no longer purchase peasants. The rights of the pomeshchiki regarding the person and property of the peasants were increased. Beginning in 1741, serfs were not called on to take the oath of loyalty administered on the accession of a new monarch to the throne. In 1760 the nobility was granted the right to exile serfs to Siberia. At the same time, the service obligations of the nobility were lessened, and in 1762 the government promulgated the Manifesto on Freedom of the Nobility, which freed the nobility from compulsory service.
The increasing oppressiveness of serfdom led to disturbances among the peasants and rabotnye liudi (workers in trade or manufacture). There were 17 uprisings in the 1730’s and 1740’s among peasants belonging to the pomeshchiki and 20 uprisings in the 1750’s; all were put down by troops. The unrest of the monastyrskie krest’iane grew into a mass movement in the late 1750’s and early 1760’s, with more than 60 uprisings breaking out; it accelerated the secularization of church property. The movement of the mining and metallurgical workers and the peasants assigned to enterprises exhibited a similar development. Disturbances took place among the workers at nearly all the privately owned metallurgical works in the Urals in the period 1760 to 1762. Large revolts took place in Bashkiria in the 1730’s and 1740’s.
The efforts of the nobility, which had grown more powerful under Peter I, to extend its privileges led to an exacerbation of the power struggle within the ruling elite. During the second quarter of the 18th century several palace coups took place, providing evidence of the tsarist regime’s dependence on the nobility. Under Catherine I (ruled 1725–27), the Supreme Privy Council was formed to deal with the most important affairs of state. It was initially dominated by Menshikov, but under Peter II (ruled 1727–30), the party of the old aristocratic families—the Dolgorukiis and Golitsyns—emerged triumphant. The council invited Peter I’s niece, Anna Ivanovna, the duchess of Courland, to assume the throne (ruled 1730–40); it hoped to limit her power, but its efforts toward this end were unsuccessful. During the reign of Anna Ivanovna power was wielded by foreigners, headed by the empress’ favorite, E. J. Biron. This state of affairs led to discontent among the nobility. Foreign domination came to an end with the coronation of Peter I’s daughter Elizaveta Petrovna (ruled 1741–61). During her reign favoritism in the government and the enrichment of the ruling elite through, for example, the distribution of state lands and peasants and state metallurgical works assumed even broader dimensions.
In the second quarter of the 18th century Russia continued its struggle to obtain outlets to the Black Sea, the Sea of Azov, and the Baltic coast. The Russo-Turkish War of 1735–39 ended with Russia’s recovering Azov and obtaining Zaporozh’e (the area occupied by the Zaporozh’e Sech’), including part of the Right-bank Ukraine. Under the Åbo Peace Treaty of 1743, which ended the Russo-Swedish War of 1741–43, Russia obtained part of Finland. In the Seven Years’ War of 1756–63, Russia was allied with Austria and France against Prussia. At the battles of Gross-Jägersdorf (1757) and Kunersdorf (1759), the Russian forces routed the Prussians, whose army was considered the most powerful in Europe. In 1760, Russian troops entered Berlin. Peter III (ruled 1761–62), however, an admirer of the Prussian king, Frederick II, returned to vanquished Prussia the territories it had lost during the war and concluded a treaty of peace and alliance in 1762. Catherine II (ruled 1762–96), brought into power by another palace coup, repudiated the alliance but did not resume war with Prussia.
The second quarter of the 18th century saw the founding of educational institutions for the nobility: the Military School for the Nobility (1732), the Naval Cadet School for the Nobility (1752), and the Corps of Pages (1759). For the most part, foreigners served in the Academy of Sciences, among them such prominent scientists and scholars as the mathematicians J. Hermann (Ia. German), N. Bernoulli, D. Bernoulli, and L. Euler and the historian G. F. Miller. In 1755, Moscow University became a center for the development of progressive Russian science and culture. The university was founded at the initiative of the outstanding Russian scholar M. V. Lomonosov, who made noteworthy contributions to physics, chemistry, astronomy, history, the study of Russian language, and Russian literature. Members of the Second Kamchatka Expedition, which was extremely important for the development of science, included the Russian sailors and explorers V. I. Bering, A. I. Chirikov, D. Ia. Laptev, Kh. P. Laptev, and S. I. Cheliuskin. Notable contributions to history and statistics were made in this period by V. N. Tatishchev, I. K. Kirilov, and Miller. Classicism became the dominant style in literature, painting, and architecture. F. G. Volkov founded the first professional Russian theater, which opened in St. Petersburg in 1756. The Academy of Arts was founded in 1757.
Beginning of the crisis of the feudal system in the second half of the 18th century. By the mid-18th century a capitalist structure was forming within the feudal-serf system of Russia. The absolutist state, which had an interest in maintaining the economic and political position of the nobility, attempted to adapt the serf-based pomeshchik economy to commodity-money relations.
Corvée and cash rents, which became widespread in agriculture in the second half of the 18th and early 19th centuries, made it possible for the serf-based economy to adapt more effectively to commodity-money relations. The increasingly common practice of paying a cash quitrent in the central nonchernozem region changed the character of the peasant economy and stimulated its development. The leasing of land took on a broader scope, economic activity and commerce underwent development, and increasing numbers of peasants flocked to the cities to perform seasonal wage labor, thereby loosening their ties to the land. The number of villages and hamlets involved in commerce and industry rose substantially. Industrial enterprises, including manufactures, were established in a number of large villages, such as Ivanovo, Dunilovo, Teikovo, Pistsovo, and Pavlovo; there emerged peasant capitalists and a stratum of peasants who subsisted by selling their labor power.
Corvée prevailed on certain farms of the central chernozem region and on a number of votchiny near Moscow and other cities of the central nonchernozem region. The development of the corvée economy led to a shrinking of peasant nadely (land allotments) and an increase in the peasant’s obligations: during the busy summer period, peasants worked from four to six days a week for the pomeshchik. On some votchiny the peasants were deprived of land altogether and were put on the mesiachina (monthly allowance) system, under which they worked only on the pomeshchik’s land and received in return a meager maintenance allowance.
Although peasant seasonal workers flowed into the cities to work as hired laborers, the permanent urban population did not increase, since peasants were essentially forbidden to join the urban estates. Increased social inequality among the townspeople led to the formation of a bourgeois commercial-industrial elite. A substantial number of the posadskie liudi, however, were still independent small producers and tradesmen; beginning in 1775, those owning less than 500 rubles were classed as meshchane.
Large-scale industry saw an increase in the number both of merchant-owned enterprises that used hired workers and of enterprises owned by the nobility that used serf workers. The mining and metallurgical industry still relied on serf labor; hired labor was used primarily outside the mills—for example, to obtain ore and wood charcoal and transport raw materials. At the turn of the 19th century, there were 200 mining and metallurgical enterprises; about 10 million poods of pig iron were smelted.
In 1767, Russia had 481 enterprises of the manufacturing industry, excluding distilling; by 1799 the figure had reached 2,094, including some 1,200 manufactures. The number of workers in the enterprises rose from 43,600 in 1767 to 81,700 in 1799, 48,200 of whom were serfs and 33,500 were hired workers. Serf workers comprised about 84 percent of the labor force in the woolen cloth industry, which was dominated by the votchina enterprises of the nobility. Wage workers accounted for 65 percent of the work force in the linen and silk industries and 92 percent in the cotton industry. The greatest number of workers (about 220,000) were employed in river transport, primarily as barge haulers. Trade grew as a result of industrial development and an increase in the marketed portion of agricultural output. More than 1,700 fairs were held in the country, including about 1,100 in European Russia and 565 in the Ukraine.
Hemp, flax, butter, and other agricultural commodities were exported to Western Europe. As a concession to the nobility, the export of grain was legalized in 1762. Grain exports averaged 754,000 poods annually in the 1760’s and 12.81 million poods in the period 1801–1805: an increase by a factor of 16–17 in 40 years. Exports of sailcloth and, until the 1780’s, iron also increased. By the end of the century iron exports had fallen from 3.84 million poods in the early 1780’s to 2.6 million poods. Russia imported sugar, woolen cloth, cotton fabrics, and luxuries, such as coffee, wine, and fruit, from the West. The exchange of goods with the countries of the East and Middle Asia increased; such trade passed through Astrakhan, Orenburg, and Kiakhta, where Russian merchants sold industrial goods, including peasant handicrafts, and bought horses, cattle, lambskins, and tea. The Black Sea trade, including the shipment of grain through the ports of Taganrog and, beginning in 1795, Odessa, expanded markedly in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Although affected to some extent by economic change, the domestic policies of the absolutist state remained essentially the same—they continued to be shaped by the interests of the nobility. About 1 million males became the property of the state in 1764, when church lands were secularized; they made up a new category of peasants, the ekonomicheskie krest’iane. As a result of the General Land Survey carried out by the government, the pomeshchiki obtained 50 million desiatinas (1 desiatina = 1.09 hectares) of additional land. Catherine II distributed 800,000 peasants of both sexes to the pomeshchiki; her son Emperor Paul I (ruled 1796–1801) distributed 600,000. The state granted monetary loans to members of the nobility for the establishment of enterprises and for other needs. Certain measures, such as the abolition of commercial-industrial monopolies, took into account the interests of the merchantry and of the peasants who engaged in commerce and handicrafts.
In social policy, the rights of the pomeshchiki over the person and property of the peasants were increased; for example, a pomeshchik was allowed to exile his peasants to hard labor and credit those exiled toward his quota of army recruits. As a result, social contradictions were exacerbated. They were reflected in progressive social thought, in which the opposition to serfdom was gathering strength, notably in the writings of A. Ia. Polenov, Ia. P. Kozel’skii, S. E. Desnitskii, and N. I. Novikov; subsequently, a revolutionary world view, represented by A. N. Radishchev, took shape.
The seriousness of the social contradictions was revealed to some extent when the deputies to the Legislative Commission of 1767 discussed the written mandates (nakazy) supplied them by the electors. The commission, made up of deputies from the nobility, the merchantry, the civil service, the clergy, the meshchane, the cossacks, nonnomadic native tribes, and certain categories of peasants, was created by Catherine II to draft a new collection of laws in the spirit of “enlightened absolutism.” During the debate, differences between the nobility and merchantry pertaining to the rights of social estates became apparent. A number of deputies brought up the question of limiting serfdom, such as G. S. Korob’in and Ia. P. Kozel’skii among the nobles and I. Chuprov and I. Zherebtsov among the state peasants.
The class struggle intensified in the second half of the 18th century. After uprisings by peasants in the region beyond Lake Onega who were assigned to manufactures (the Kizhi Uprising of 1769–71), by residents of Moscow (the Plague Revolt of 1771), and by the cossacks on the Iaik River (1772), the Peasant War led by E. I. Pugachev broke out and soon encompassed vast areas of the Ural and Volga regions. An uprising against tsarism and serfdom, the Peasant War drew support from Russian peasants, cossacks, and rabotnye liudi of the mines and metallurgical works in the Urals, as well as from members of such non-Russian peoples as Bashkirs, Tatars, and Mari. Pugachev, who embodied the aspirations of the enserfed peasants, took the name of Peter III and issued a manifesto that proclaimed the liberation of the serfs from bondage and the expropriation of the land by the people. In 1796 and 1797 there were peasant disturbances in 32 Russian provinces.
The Peasant War of 1773–75 rocked the nobility-dominated state, shook the people’s faith in the invincibility of the feudal order, and accelerated the downfall of serfdom. The tsarist government, after dealing harshly with the participants in the war, abolished the Zaporozh’e (New) Sech’ and the Volga Cossack Host in 1775, once and for all brought the Don and the Iaik (Ural) hosts under its control, and strengthened the bodies of local government. A series of regional and municipal reforms were carried out between 1775 and 1785 that created a solid bureaucratic system of government in the provinces; to reinforce the system, the government organized bodies of self-government for the nobility, such as the assemblies of the nobility at the provincial and district levels. The urban posadskie liudi were divided into six categories, which included the meshchane and three merchant classes, or guilds. In 1785 municipal dumas were established.
The restructuring of local government resulted in the elimination of several collegia of the central government, such as the Chamber Collegium and Audit Collegium (Revizion-kollegiia). The policy of strengthening the state machinery was complemented by the suppression of uprisings against serfdom and of progressive social thought, particularly during the French Revolution, when Radishchev was arrested in 1790 and Novikov in 1792. Nevertheless, the increasing disintegration of the serf system, the peasant movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and the spread of views inimical to serfdom, notably by Radishchev’s Journey From St. Petersburg to Moscow, caused the government to adopt a policy that took into account the potential for a revolutionary explosion in the country. In 1797 a ukase was promulgated that called for corvée to be limited to three days a week; the extensive distribution of peasants to the pomeshchiki was ended in 1801.
Foreign policy in the last third of the 18th century was dominated by Russia’s desire to extend its borders so that they included all the Ukrainian and Byelorussian lands and to continue the struggle for the Black Sea coast. By ensuring the security of Russia’s possessions in the south, the tsarist government would also satisfy the nobility, who hoped to obtain the fertile lands of the region, and the merchants, who wanted access to the Black Sea ports.
During the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–74, the First Army, under P. A. Rumiantsev, scored brilliant victories at Riabaia Mogila and the Larga and Kagul rivers and seized Turkish fortresses in Moldavia and on the Danube; the Second Army captured fortresses in the Crimea. A Russian squadron dispatched from the Baltic to the Mediterranean routed the Turkish fleet at the battle of Çeşme of 1770; the de facto commander was Admiral G. A. Spiridov. Under the Treaty of Kuchuk Kainarji of 1774, Russia received the lands between the Dnieper and the Iuzhnyi Bug, parts of the Azov and Kuban’ regions, and Kerch’ and the fortress of Enikale in the Crimea. The Crimean Khanate became free of Turkey and in 1783 was incorporated into Russia.
From 1768 to 1772 the tsarist government intervened in the internal affairs of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, supporting Russia’s puppet, King Stanislaw II August Poniatowski, in the struggle against the Confederation of Bar. In 1772, Russia joined with Prussia and Austria in the First Partition of Poland, under which Russia received part of eastern Byelorussia (along a line extending from the Dnieper to the Zapadnaia Dvina) and Latgalia.
Turkey again declared war on Russia in 1787. Sweden attempted to exploit the war in order to reestablish its dominance in the Baltic, but after suffering a number of defeats at sea it concluded a peace treaty that reaffirmed the territorial changes won by Russia under previous treaties. In the south, Russian troops under A. V. Suvorov took the fortress of Izmail in 1790, and Russian forces under N. V. Repnin routed the Turks at Mäcin in 1791. The recently created Black Sea Fleet, commanded by F. F. Ushakov, won victories at Tendra in 1790 and Kaliakra in 1791.
In 1791, Turkey recognized the incorporation of the Crimean Khanate into Russia; a new border was drawn along the Dnestr. The victories in the wars with Turkey made possible the economic development of the southern steppes and the development of the Black Sea trade. The weakening of Turkey fostered an upsurge in the national liberation movement in the Balkans.
The tsarist government suppressed the liberation movement in Poland in the early 1790’s. In 1792, at the invitation of the counterrevolutionary Confederation of Targowica, tsarist troops entered Poland, broke the resistance of the Polish Army, and overthrew the government of the patriotic party. The Second Partition of Poland (1793) gave to Russia the Right-bank Ukraine and part of Byelorussia, including Minsk. In 1794 tsarist troops suppressed a national liberation uprising led by T. Kosciuszko. The Third Partition of Poland (1795) put an end to Poland as an independent state. Russia received Courland, Lithuania, part of Western Byelorussia, and Volynia. The agreements signed by Russia pertaining to the partitioning of Poland are known as the St. Petersburg Conventions.
Intervention in Polish affairs prevented Russia from taking an active part in the struggle against revolutionary France. In 1798, however, the tsarist government organized an anti-French coalition comprising Russia, Great Britain, Austria, Turkey, and the Kingdom of Naples. In the war with France, Russian troops under Suvorov won a series of victories in Italy and conducted a campaign in the Swiss Alps. The Black Sea Fleet, commanded by Ushakov, was active in the Mediterranean from 1798 to 1800. Increasing differences among the allies led to Russia’s withdrawal from the coalition; in 1800 it concluded an alliance with France and broke with Great Britain. The ruling elite, unhappy with the despotic and capricious behavior of Paul I, organized a palace coup, in which the tsar was murdered; his son Alexander took the throne as Alexander I (ruled 1801–25).
The country’s economic development, the increased complexity of the administrative apparatus, and the growing strength of the army and navy prompted the government to expand the system of schools. In the last third of the 18th and the early 19th centuries, Russia had more than 60 private educational institutions for the nobility, including the schools for the nobility and private boarding schools, as well as specialized schools in such fields as mining, surveying, medicine, and commerce, religious seminaries and schools, provincial and district public schools, and soldiers’ schools. At the turn of the 19th century such educational institutions numbered 550 and had a total enrollment of 62,000.
The Academy of Sciences organized comprehensive studies of Russia’s natural features, economy, and population; a number of expeditions were conducted, notably by P. S. Pallas, I. I. Lepekhin, and S. Gmelin. Moscow University, with which such students and adherents of Lomonosov as N. N. Popovskii, Desnitskii, and D. S. Anichkov were associated, remained the center of advanced science. Major technological advances were made by I. I. Polzunov, known for his work on the steam engine, and I. P. Kulibin. The Free Economic Society was founded in 1765. The opposition to serfdom was reflected in literature (D.I. Fonvizin’s The Minor and the writings of Radishchev) and journalism (the journals edited by Novikov).
European Russia, Transcaucasia, Middle Asia, and Kazakhstan in the second half of the 17th and the 18th centuries. Economic development in the Ukraine in the 17th and first half of the 18th centuries was characterized by the improvement of agriculture, the development of such activities as flour milling and distilling, and the growth of domestic and foreign trade. The Left-bank Ukraine became part of the nationwide market. The Right-bank Ukraine, ruled by Poland, became the object of a struggle between the Polish government and the Ottoman Empire. Increased feudal-serf exploitation, especially in the Right-bank Ukraine, triggered protests by the popular masses. Capitalist relations appeared in the feudal-serf economy of the Ukraine in the second half of the 18th century.
In the mid-17th century the Moldavians took an active part in the national liberation war of the Ukrainian and Byelorussian peoples; beginning in the 1650’s they requested, on numerous occasions, that Moscow accept them as subjects. A new stage in relations between Moldavia and Russia was marked by the conclusion of an alliance between Hospodar Dmitrii Kantemir and Peter I, the entry of Russian troops into Moldavia, and joint action by Russia and Moldavia against Turkey, notably at the battle of Stänilesti of 1711. The failure of the Prut Campaign of 1711, however, led to the establishment of rule by the Phanariot Greeks in Moldavia and to a worsening of the lot of the popular masses. The national liberation struggle of the Moldavian people gathered momentum in the 18th century, especially during the Russo-Turkish wars. In the Treaty of Kuchuk Kainarji, Russia won for Moldavia certain benefits (notably a reduction of its tribute), which Turkey did not honor. By the Treaty of Iaşi of 1791, Russia gained the entire northern Black Sea coast from the Dnestr to the Kuban’, including the Crimea, and strengthened its political hand in the Caucasus and the Balkans.
The economies of Byelorussia and Lithuania, undermined by the protracted wars waged by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 17th century, declined in the mid-17th century.
The urban population of Byelorussia decreased in size, and the peasants became further enserfed. At the demand of the szlachta, the sejms (diets) adopted laws—notably in 1661, 1667, 1671, and 1683—forbidding peasants to leave their masters and making it easier to recover fugitives. The pomeshchiki began to enjoy complete power over their serfs. Corvée and other obligations increased.
Beginning in the summer of 1648 the Byelorussian people played an active role in the War of Liberation of the Ukrainian People of 1648–54 against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Although the uprising in the Byelorussian lands was suppressed in 1651, it diverted considerable numbers of troops away from the Ukraine. During the Russo-Polish War of 1654–67, Russian troops, supported by the population, liberated most of Byelorussia. At that time, however, Russia did not have sufficient forces to hold the territory; as a result, the Armistice of Andrusovo of 1667 left Byelorussia under the rule of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In the second half of the 17th century the Catholic Church exerted its influence to have certain Byelorussian schools and presses that had been organized by the brotherhoods shut down. The peoples of Byelorussia and Lithuania fought against increased feudal-serf exploitation; peasant uprisings continued to break out, notably in the starostwo (small rural district) of Krichev from 1740 to 1744 and on the landlord estate of Šiauilai (Saule) in 1769.
The economies of Byelorussia and Lithuania revived in the mid-18th century. Exports of grain and other agricultural commodities increased, corvée (folwark) farming and votchina industry (primarily distilling) underwent development, and state and private manufactures appeared. The development of corvée farming led to the peasantry’s being deprived of land, especially in Lithuania. The Byelorussian lands became part of Russia as a result of the partitions of Poland, which thus were of progressive significance. Under the Third Partition of Poland in 1795, Russia was given Lithuania, with the exception of the territories west of the Neman River, which were annexed in 1815.
Beginning in the 17th century, the Georgians and Armenians increasingly turned to Russia in their struggle against foreign oppression. The stationing of Russian troops in the Caspian areas of Azerbaijan from 1723 to 1735 helped strengthen Russia’s ties with the peoples of Georgia and Armenia. After 1735 the Caspian regions of Azerbaijan again came under the sway of Iran. The Georgian kingdoms of Kartli-Kakhetia and Imereti, which threw off the foreign yoke with the support of Russia, became stronger in the second half of the 18th century. In Georgia, favorable conditions were created for the development of agriculture, industry, and trade. A treaty of friendship concluded by Russia and the Kartli-Kakhetian Kingdom in 1783 made Russia’s protectorate over the kingdom official.
Kazakhstan was repeatedly invaded by the Dzungars in the second half of the 17th and first half of the 18th centuries. In their struggle against the Dzungars, the Kazakhs sought to enlist Russia’s support. In 1731 the Kazakhs of the Little Horde voluntarily became part of the Russian state, and in 1740 the Middle Horde became subject to Russia. The territory of the Greater Horde was occupied by the Dzungars; after the Dzungars were routed by China in 1758, part of the Greater Horde was absorbed by the Kokand Khanate, and part was seized by Manchu feudal lords.
In the 17th and 18th centuries the peoples of Middle Asia continued to exhibit wide differences in their level of development. Nomadic livestock raising remained the primary occupation of the Turkmens, Kara-Kalpaks, and Kirghiz; the Uzbeks and Tadzhiks engaged chiefly in land cultivation and fruit farming. Industry and trade developed in the cities of the land-cultivating regions, such as Samarkand, Bukhara, Khiva, Tashkent, and Kokand. The principal means of production—land and water—were controlled by fief holders (bais) and the feudal state, which owned the amlyak lands.
In the 17th century the main states of Middle Asia were the Bukhara and Khiva khanates. The khanates, as well as the Kazakh hordes, experienced internecine warfare that brought ruin to the population of Middle Asia; within the khanates, the vicegerents quarreled with one another and engaged in a fierce struggle for power. The disintegration of the Bukhara Khanate began in the 18th century and accelerated with the invasion of the Iranian troops of Nadir Shah in the 1740’s. First the Kokand Khanate and then (in the late 18th century) the Tashkent Khanate became separate from the Bukhara Khanate. The economic ties of the peoples of Middle Asia with Russia were strengthened in the second half of the 18th and early 19th centuries.
Crisis of serfdom in the first half of the 19th century. The historically progressive, inevitable process by which new, capitalist relations were engendered by the feudal system unfolded in Russia in the first half of the 19th century. The elimination of the serf system, which was retarding the country’s economic development, became historically necessary.
The development of the lands in the new regions continued, notably in the northern Black Sea region and in the areas along the lower course of the Don. In European Russia, the sown area increased from 38 million desiatinas in 1802 to 58 million desiatinas in 1861; the grain harvest increased from 155 million chetverti (at this time the official chetvert’ was equal to 8 poods) to 220 million chetverti. New branches of agriculture developed, such as the cultivation of sugar beets and the raising of fine-wooled sheep. The relative importance of industrial crops became greater, and potatoes, which had been grown in small gardens, became a field crop. Increased land cultivation was characteristic of the frontier regions, however; in areas where land-ownership by the nobility and corvée exploitation of the peasants predominated—the central chernozem, western, and southwestern regions—stagnation was evident; beginning in the 1840’s and 1850’s yields declined, and the grain harvest per capita fell.
The growing demand for agricultural products and raw materials for industry stimulated the development of commercial land cultivation. In the mid-19th century as much as 60–80 percent of the total grain harvest on certain pomeshchik farms went to the market, bringing about a decline in the peasant economy and the ruin of the peasantry, which in turn undermined the corvée economy of the pomeshchiki.
The exploitation of peasants who paid quitrent increased substantially. In the late 18th and first half of the 19th centuries, the quitrent per capita rose by 100–200 percent; as a result, the peasant economy in the areas where quitrent prevailed suffered decline and ruin. The nobility’s rapidly increasing parasitic consumption of material goods led to the ruin of that class. By the 1860’s nearly all pomeshchik estates had been mortgaged; an increasing number of estates were taken into trusteeship and sold to pay off debts. As commodity-money relations developed, the social and property stratification of the peasantry became more marked, especially in the rural areas in which crafts and land cultivation predominated; there, the prosperous peasant elite combined capitalist entrepreneurship, trade, and moneylending with small-scale land cultivation. The peasants reduced to poverty became wage laborers who also worked nadely.
Small-scale production continued to play the primary role in industry; in the 1850’s it employed more workers than large-scale industry and produced nearly double the volume and value of output. Metallurgy, in which exploited serf labor prevailed, developed at an extremely slow rate. The production of pig iron rose from about 11 million poods to 18.2 million poods—that is, increased by a factor of 1.7, as compared to a factor of 24 in Great Britain.
Manufacturing industry witnessed a collapse of the posessionnye manufaktury—privately owned manufactures the sale of whose land or bound workers was subject to conditions stipulated by posessionnoe pravo (possessional law). Between 1799 and 1860 the number of posessionnye workers declined from 33,500 to 12,000. At the same time, the number of serf workers in votchina manufactures increased from 14,700 to 91,000. The capitalist manufacture developed rapidly, as did the factory (in manufacturing industry) beginning in the 1830’s. The rise of the capitalist manufacture caused the proportion of hired workers in woolen cloth enterprises to increase from 18.4 percent in 1825 to 50.6 percent in 1860. In 1858 there were 573,300 workers in manufacturing enterprises, of whom 462,000, or 80 percent, were hired laborers. Capitalist industry came to prevail over serf industry by virtue of the greater productivity of wage labor (see Table 1).
Table 1. Growth of the national economy of Russia from 1800 to 1860	Table 1. Growth of the national economy of Russia from 1800 to 1860	Table 1. Growth of the national economy of Russia from 1800 to 1860	Table 1. Growth of the national economy of Russia from 1800 to 1860	Table 1. Growth of the national economy of Russia from 1800 to 1860	Table 1. Growth of the national economy of Russia from 1800 to 1860
 	Population (millions) 	Grain harvested (million chetverti) 	Pig iron smelted (million poods) 	Gold extracted (thousand kg pure metal) 	Workers i n industry (thousands)
1800 ............... 	35.5 	155 	12.2 	— 	—
1810 ............... 	40.7 	155 	12.2 	— 	—
1820 ............... 	48.6 	— 	— 	0.32 	179.6
1830 ............... 	56.1 	— 	11.2 	6.27 	253.9
1840 ............... 	62.4 	179 	11.0 	7.50 	435.8
1850 ............... 	68.5 	— 	13.9 	23.82 	501.6
1860 ............... 	74.1 	220 	18.2 	24.42 	565.1
The development of the capitalist manufacture paved the way in the first half of the century for the onset of the industrial revolution—the transition to a new stage in the development of capitalism, the factory (machine) stage.
The increasing social division of labor was accompanied by a rise in the proportion of urban dwellers in the population, increased specialization of the various regions of the country in particular branches of the economy, and growth in domestic trade. Urban dwellers constituted 4.2 percent (771,300 males) of the total population in 1795 and 6.4 percent (1,844,000 males) in 1857. Russia’s foreign trade increased by a factor of nearly 3.5 in the first half of the 19th century, from 127.8 million rubles in 1801–05 to 431.4 million rubles in 1856–60; in the same period exports of iron and sailcloth ceased, and grain exports rose from 12.8 million poods in 1801–05 to 69.2 million poods in 1856–60. Industrial and luxury goods predominated among exports from the West; the import of machinery began.
The development of trade, especially internal trade, was retarded not only by serfdom but by the state of Russia’s transportation system, which was one of the weakest areas of the country’s economy. A large percentage of transported goods were shipped on river boats moved by barge haulers, who, together with the dockworkers in the ports, numbered about 500,000 in the 1850’s, and on carts, which traveled along bad roads. The use of machinery in transport was only beginning. The first steamboat in Russia was launched on the Neva in 1815. There were 40 steam-powered tugboats and vessels carrying passengers and freight in 1833 and about 400 in 1860, 200 of which plied the Volga. The first railroad, which ran from St. Petersburg to Tsarskoe Selo, a distance of 27 km, was opened in 1837. In 1851, after the construction of the 644-km St. Petersburg-Moscow railroad, Russia had a total of 1,004 km of railroad lines, as compared to 10,000 in Great Britain and 6,044 km in Germany.
The serf system hindered the creation of a market in free labor, constricted the domestic market, and held back capital accumulation, the development of capitalism, and the formation of a bourgeoisie and proletariat; it therefore condemned the country to backwardness. Russia’s share of world industrial production fell to 1.7 percent by 1861. France exceeded Russia’s output by a factor of 7.2, Germany by a factor of 9, and Great Britain by a factor of 18.
In the first years of the 19th century, it became apparent to the government that state and economic reforms were necessary. At the beginning of Alexander I’s reign, ministries and the Committee of Ministers were established (1802), the Council of State was formed (1810), a ukase was promulgated allowing the pomeshchiki to let their peasants become free cultivators (1803), and the feudal lords of the Baltic region were prohibited from selling peasants without land (1804). The reforms were the work of the Unofficial Committee and M. M. Speranskii.
Between 1816 and 1819 the peasants of the Baltic region were freed from personal serf dependence, a step that fostered the development of capitalism in the region. All land remained in the hands of the pomeshchiki, however, and the majority of peasants became renters. Pressured by the pomeshchiki of Russia and the Ukraine, the government refused to carry out reforms that would fundamentally infringe on the serf system.
In 1805, Russia joined a new anti-French coalition, which was defeated during the campaigns known as the wars of the Third and Fourth Coalitions (in Russian, the Russo-Austro-French War of 1805 and the Russo-Prussian-French War of 1806–07). Russo-Austrian troops were routed at Austerlitz in 1805, Prussian-Saxon troops at Jena and Auerstädt in 1806, and Russian troops at Friedland in 1807. The French occupied Prussia. Russia was compelled to sign the Treaty of Tilsit with France in 1807. Under the treaty Russia allowed the creation on its borders of the Duchy of Warsaw, which was to be subject to France, and agreed to break off relations with Great Britain and join the Continental System.
Russian forces captured Finland and invaded Sweden during the Russo-Swedish War of 1808–09. By the Treaty of Fredrikshamm of 1809, Russia received Finland and the Åland Islands.
The Russo-Turkish War of 1806–12 began with Russia’s liberation of the Danubian principalities in 1806. After a truce, military operations resumed in 1809; a Russian force under the command of M. I. Kutuzov ended the war by encircling and routing the main Turkish force at Ruscuk (Ruse) in 1811. Under the Bucharest Peace Treaty of 1812, Bessarabia and Western Georgia passed to Russia.
The incorporation of Georgia into the Russian Empire had begun in 1801. Russian troops were introduced into Transcaucasia, and in 1804 they subjugated the Giandzha Khanate. These developments triggered a war with Persia that lasted from 1804 to 1813. Under the Treaty of Gulistan of 1813, Persia recognized the incorporation of northern Azerbaijan and Dagestan into Russia.
The deterioration of relations between Russia and France led to the Patriotic War of 1812, in which Russia was invaded by Napoleon’s army, numbering 600,000 men. The Russian forces, which numbered 230,000, fell back and carried out rearguard actions. After the abandonment of Smolensk, the army was placed under the command of Kutuzov. The enemy suffered huge losses at the battle of Borodino, but Kutuzov, lacking sufficient troops, was forced to abandon Moscow. In Moscow, Napoleon’s army found itself in a difficult position owing to a flanking maneuver (the Tarutino maneuver) performed by Kutuzov, in which the Russians moved onto the Old Kaluga Road; to the reinforcement of the Russian forces by reserves; and to the appearance of partisan detachments consisting of peasants and other strata of the population. In October 1812, Napoleon began a retreat along the Old Kaluga Road, but Russian troops barred the way at Maloiaroslavets and forced him to fall back along the Smolensk Road, the area along which had been ravaged by the French. Napoleon’s army was virtually annihilated by Russian troops and partisans.
In 1813, under the influence of the Russian people’s victory in the Patriotic War of 1812, a new coalition formed; the coalition, which comprised Russia, Prussia, Great Britain, Austria, and Sweden, was victorious. In 1814, Russian troops entered Paris together with their allies. The Congress of Vienna of 1814–15 granted Russia most of Poland; the territory was transformed into the Kingdom of Poland. The war strengthened tsarism, which became a bulwark of reaction within the country and in Europe. The Holy Alliance, made up of Austria, Prussia, and Russia, was formed for the purpose of crushing the revolutionary movement in Europe.
After the Patriotic War of 1812 the government of Alexander I embraced an openly reactionary policy. A. A. Arakcheev and A. N. Golitsyn became the tsar’s closest aides. Military settlements based on serf labor were established, most of them after 1816. The right of the pomeshchiki to exile serfs to Siberia without trial, which had been abolished in 1809, was reinstated in 1822. The repression of progressive science and literature increased; for example, A. S. Pushkin was banished in 1820. Class struggle and the peasant movement against serfdom grew throughout the period. There were some 800 peasant disturbances in the first quarter of the 19th century; most serious were the uprisings staged in the period 1817 to 1819 by state peasants whom the government had made military settlers. In 1820 the soldiers of the Semenovskii Regiment revolted, provoked by the regimentation, harsh discipline, and humiliation they suffered at the hands of their officers.
The upsurge in the antiserfdom struggle gave birth to a social movement for liberation in the country. Initially, the movement was represented by revolutionaries from the nobility. The first such revolutionaries, the Decembrists, had been brought up on the ideas of the French Revolution, the Enlightenment thinkers of the West, and progressive Russian writers, notably Radishchev. Their world view was also greatly influenced by the Patriotic War of 1812, the foreign campaigns of the Russian Army in 1813 and 1814, and the revolutionary events of 1820 and 1821 in the West. The Union of Salvation was formed in 1816, and the Union of Welfare in 1818; in the period 1821 to 1823, secret societies were founded: the Northern Society in St. Petersburg and the Southern Society and the Society of the United Slavs in the Ukraine.
On Dec. 14, 1825, officer members of the Northern Society led about 3,000 soldiers to Senate Square in St. Petersburg; on December 29 the Chernigov Regiment Uprising, organized by officers belonging to the Southern Society, broke out in the Ukraine. The revolts were brutally suppressed. Five leaders of the movement—P. I. Pestel’, S. I. Murav’ev-Apostol, M. P. Bestuzhev-Riumin, K. F. Ryleev, and P. G. Kakhovskii—were hanged; the rest of the Decembrists were banished to penal servitude, became penal settlers, or were sent to fight with the army in the Caucasus.
The Decembrists’ revolt was the first openly revolutionary uprising against the autocracy in Russian history. It ushered in the first, “nobility,” period (c. 1825–61) in the history of the Russian liberation movement.
After the suppression of the Decembrist Uprising, a period of reaction ensued. Resolutely opposed to any new currents in thought, Tsar Nicholas I (ruled 1825–55) actively promoted the reactionary official nationality theory in an effort to provide ideological support for the notion that the autocracy and serfdom were unshakable. The Third Section of His Imperial Majesty’s Own Chancery was established in 1826, and a corps of national police (gendarmes) was created. The government harshly repressed education, the press, and literature, as well as those who took part in antiserfdom demonstrations and revolutionary study groups. A statute of 1835 abolished the autonomy of the universities, placing them under the jurisdiction of appointed civil servants called superintendents. Journals that printed opinions differing from the views of the reactionaries were shut down; such was the fate of Evropeets (The European) in 1832, Moskovskii telegraf (Moscow Telegraph) in 1834, and Teleskop (Telescope) in 1836.
Revolutionary ideas were disseminated in secret study groups, which flourished at Moscow University, where the study groups of such figures as the Kritskii brothers, A. I. Herzen, and N. P. Ogarev were formed. The revolutionary democratic camp emerged in the late 1830’s and in the 1840’s. Its leaders, V. G. Belinskii, Herzen, and Ogarev, linked the abolition of the autocratic-serf system with popular revolution. The first illegal study group of Utopian socialists, the Petrashevskii circle, was formed in St. Petersburg.
A liberal-bourgeois critique of the serf system was developed in the second quarter of the 19th century. Progressive Russian literature played an appreciable role in disseminating progressive ideas, notably through the works of Pushkin, A. S. Griboedov, M. Iu. Lermontov, and N. V. Gogol.
The liberal-bourgeois trend in the social movement became fully defined in the late 1830’s. It was represented by the Westernizers, such as K. D. Kavelin, B. N. Chicherin, V. P. Botkin, and E. F. Korsh, and the Slavophiles, such as I. V. Kireevskii, A. S. Khomiakov, I. S. Aksakov, and K. S. Aksakov. Hoping to avoid revolutionary upheaval in Russia, both groups supported the abolition of serfdom through a series of reforms that would retain pomeshchik landownership and preserve, to a limited extent, the power of the pomeshchik over the peasant.
In the second quarter of the 19th century alone, there were about 1,400 peasant rebellions in the country. A wave of “cholera riots,” touched off by the quarantine measures implemented to fight cholera epidemics in such cities as Tambov, St. Petersburg, and Stara Russa, swept over Russia in 1830 and 1831. An uprising broke out in Poland in November 1830 and spread to Lithuania. With great difficulty, the tsarist government managed to put down the revolt in 1831. In the Right-bank Ukraine (in Podolia) the struggle of the peasants, which reached its greatest extent between 1832 and 1835, was led by U. Ia. Karmaliuk. A mass revolt of Georgian peasants, the Guria Uprising, took place in 1841, and peasants in Putivl’ District, Kursk Province, staged a mass uprising in 1849. The greatest number of peasant disturbances took place in the 1850’s.
At the same time that it was harshly suppressing the peasant uprisings, the tsarist government attempted to overcome the crisis of serfdom through partial reforms, moved to prop up the nobility by increasing the distribution of grants and loans to impoverished pomeshchiki, and, in a ukase of 1831 on the societies of the nobility, sought to prevent members of other estates from entering the estate of the nobility. Projects for reforms were discussed in the Secret Committees, notably those of 1826–32, 1835–36, and 1839–42, but the government, afraid of disturbing the foundations of serfdom, limited itself to half measures.
Under the direction of P. D. Kiselev, a reform of the administration of state peasants was carried out from 1837 to 1841. The corvée obligations of state peasants in Lithuania, Byelorussia, and the Right-bank Ukraine were abolished, and the practice of leasing estates was ended; a certain amount of regulation was introduced into the administration of estates. Under a ukase of 1842 on ob”iazannye krest’iane (obligated peasants), peasants gained personal rights but were obliged to fulfill certain contractual duties in exchange for the use of land. Through the Inventory Regulations, which were adopted in 1847 and supplemented in 1848, the government established the size of nadely and set forth the obligations of the peasants belonging to pomeshchiki in Lithuania, Byelorussia, and the Right-bank Ukraine. The tsarist government’s measures failed to resolve the crisis of serfdom, however.
After the victory over Napoleonic France, the tsarist government directed its foreign policy toward combating the revolutionary threat in Europe. Seeking to revive the Holy Alliance, which had in effect disintegrated in 1830–31, Nicholas I maintained close ties with the monarchs of Austria and Prussia. In 1831 the tsarist government suppressed an uprising in Poland, and in 1849, together with the Austrian government, crushed a revolution in Hungary.
The incipient collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the upsurge in the national liberation movement in the Balkans (evidenced by uprisings in Serbia and Greece), and an increase in intervention by Great Britain and France in the Middle East caused Russia to turn its attention eastward. Russia sought to establish control over the Black Sea straits, achieve hegemony in the Balkans, and expand its possessions in Transcaucasia. Russia’s move across Transcaucasia was opposed by Turkey, by Persia, and by Great Britain, which pushed Persia into a war with Russia that lasted from 1826 to 1828.
Turkey attempted to exploit the Russo-Persian conflict and the mounting tension between Russia, Great Britain, and France. During the Russo-Turkish War of 1828–29, however, the Russian Army was victorious in the Balkans and Transcaucasia; advancing through the Balkans, it reached the approaches to Constantinople. Under the Treaty of Adrianople of 1829, Russia obtained the pashalic of Akhaltsikhe in Georgia and the Black Sea coast from the Kuban’ estuary to the northern borders of Adzharia. Greece, Serbia, Moldavia, and Walachia acquired autonomy; in 1830, Greece became independent.
In 1833, Russia’s position in the Middle East was again strengthened when the tsarist government, taking advantage of the military conflict between the Turkish sultan, Mahmud II, and his vassal Pasha Mehement AH of Egypt, concluded the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi with the Turkish government. In exchange for Russian military aid, Turkey promised to close the Dardanelles to all foreign warships at Russia’s request in the event of war. The treaty strained Russia’s relations with the Western European powers, however. It was superseded by the London conventions on the straits of 1841 and 1842, which weakened Russia’s position and opened the door to British and French interference in settling the straits question.
Expanded colonization in the Northern Caucasus and the tsarist government’s harsh policy of conquest engendered spontaneous mass uprisings by the mountaineers. In Chechnia and Dagestan the liberation struggle of the local population assumed the form of Muridism and was waged under the reactionary banner of the ghazawat, a religious war of the Muslims against the unfaithful—the Russians. The movement was diverse in its social makeup and exhibited internal contradictions. By inflaming a fanatical hatred toward non-Muslims, it distracted the mountaineers from the resolution of social problems. From 1834 to 1859 the struggle was led by Shamil.
The clash of tsarist Russia’s economic and political interests in the Middle East with those of the powers hostile to Russia led to the Crimean War of 1853–56. Although the conflict began as a Russo-Turkish war, Great Britain and France entered on the side of Turkey in January 1854; they were followed by Sardinia in January 1855. Austria and Prussia adhered to a neutrality hostile to Russia. In the first period of the war, Russian troops occupied the Danubian principalities, annihilated a Turkish fleet at the battle of Sinop, and turned back a Turkish offensive in Transcaucasia. The British and French, who enjoyed overwhelming naval superiority, were also driven back in 1854, on the Baltic Sea, on the White Sea, and in the Far East, where they attempted to capture Petropavlovsk on Kamchatka. In order to avoid a war with Austria, Russia was compelled to withdraw from the Danubian principalities in the summer of 1854.
Beginning in the fall of 1854, military operations were conducted in Transcaucasia and the Crimea, where a British, French, and Turkish landing force laid siege to Sevastopol’. The heroic defense of Sevastopol’, led by admirals P. S. Nakhimov and V. A. Kornilov, lasted 349 days, but the enemy, which possessed substantially superior weaponry, was victorious. Under the Treaty of Paris of 1856, Russia renounced its designs on Turkey; the Black Sea was neutralized, warships and bases being forbidden; and Great Britain and France established a protectorate over Moldavia, Walachia, and Serbia.
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Mongol-Tatar yoke
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14th-17th centuries
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Middle Asia and Kazakhstan prior to the 18th century
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Al-Biriuni. Izbr. proizv., vol. 1. Tashkent, 1957.Baber, Zahiral-Din. Babur-name. Tashkent, 1958.Bichurin, N. Ia. (Iakinf). Sobranie svedenii o narodakh, obitavshikh v Srednei Azii v drevnie vremena, vols. 1–3. Moscow-Leningrad, 1950–53.
Dokumenty k istorii agrarnykh otnoshenii v Bukharskom khanstve, fasc. 1. Tashkent, 1954.
Kazakhsko-russkie otnosheniia v XVI–XVIII vv.: Sb. dok-tov i mat-lov, Alma-Ata, 1961.
Kniga Marko Polo. Moscow, 1955.
Mat-ly po istorii turkmen i Turkmenii, vols. 1–2. Moscow-Leningrad, 1938–39.
Mat-ly po istorii Uzbekskoi, Tadzhikskoi i Turkmenskoi SSR, part 1. Leningrad, 1932.
===REFERENCES===
Agadzhanov, S. G. Ocherki istorii oguzov i turkmen Srednei Azii IX–XIII vv. Ashkhabad, 1969.Bartol’d, V. V. “Ocherki istorii Semirech’ia.” Soch., vol. 2, part 1. Moscow, 1963.Bartol’d, V. V. “Kirgizy.” Ibid.Bartol’d, V. V. “Ocherk istorii turkmenskogo naroda.” Ibid.Kadyrova, T. K. Iz istorii krest’ianskikh vosstanii v Maverannakhre i Khorasane v VIII–nach. IX vv. Tashkent, 1965.Azimdzhanova, S. A. K istorii Fergany 2-i pol. XV v. Tashkent, 1957.Akhmedov, B. A. Gosudarstvo kochevykh uzbekov. Moscow, 1965.Ivanov, P. P. Ocherki po istorii Srednei Azii (XVI–seredina XIX v.). Moscow, 1958.Ivanov, P. P. Khoziaistvo dzhuibarskikh sheikhov: K istorii feodal’nogo zemlevladeniia v Srednei Azii v XVI–XVII vv. (a study, with documents). Moscow-Leningrad, 1954.Makhmudov, N. Zemledelie i agrarnye otnosheniia v Srednei Azii v XIV–XVvv. Dushanbe, 1966.Mukminova, R. G. K istorii agrarnykh otnoshenii v Uzbekistane XVI v. Tashkent, 1966.Petrov, K. I. Ocherki feodal’nykh otnoshenii u kirgizov v XV–XVIII vv. Frunze, 1961.Apollova, N. G. Prisoedinenie Kazakhstana k Rossii. Alma-Ata, 1948.Apollova, N. G. Ekonomicheskie i politicheskie sviazi Kazakhstana s Rossiei v XVIII–nachale XIX v. Moscow, 1960.Erenov, A. Ocherki po istorii feodal’nykh zemel’nykh otnoshenii u kazakhov. Alma-Ata, 1961.Zimanov, S. Z. Politicheskii stroi Kazakhstana kontsa XVIII i pervoi poloviny XIX vv. Alma-Ata, 1960.
First half of the 19th century
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Okun’, S. B. Ocherki istorii SSSR: Konets XVIII–1-ia chetvert’ XIX v. Leningrad, 1956.Okun’, S. B. Ocherki istorii SSSR: Vtoraia chetvert’ XIX v. Leningrad, 1957.Predtechenskii, A. V. Ocherki obshchestvenno-politicheskoi istorii Rossii v pervoi chetverti XIX v. Moscow-Leningrad, 1957.Fadeev, A. V. Doreformennaia Rossiia. Moscow, 1960.
Government structure, socioeconomic development, and class struggle
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Krest’ianskoe dvizhenie v Rossii v XIX–nachale XX vv.: Sb. dok-tov [vols. 1–3]. Moscow, 1961–62.
Rabochee dvizhenie v Rossii v XIX v.: Sb. dok-tov i mat-lov, vol. 1, parts 1–2 (1800–1860). Moscow, 1955.Speranskii, M. M. Proekty i zapiski. Moscow-Leningrad, 1961.
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Alekseev, A. I. Sud’ba russkoi Ameriki. Magadan, 1975.Kabuzan, V. M. Narodonaselenie Rossii v XVIII–pervoi polovine XIX v. Moscow, 1963.
Ocherki ekonomicheskoi istorii Rossii pervoi poloviny XIX v. Moscow, 1959.Rozhkova, M. K. Ekonomicheskaia politika tsarskogo pravitel’stva na Srednem Vostoke vo vtoroi chetverti XIX v. i russkaia burzhuaziia. Moscow-Leningrad, 1949.Iatsunskii, V. K. Sotsial’no-ekonomicheskaia istoriia Rossii XVIII–XIX vv. Moscow, 1973.Kiniapina, N. S. Politika russkogo samoderzhaviia v oblasti promyshlennosti (20–50-egg. XIX v.). Moscow, 1968.Ryndziunskii, P. G. Gorodskoe grazhdanstvo doreformennoi Rossii. Moscow, 1958.Iakovtsevskii, V. N. Kupecheskii kapital v feodal’no-krepostnicheskoi Rossii. Moscow, 1953.Druzhinin, N. M. Gosudarstvennye krest’iane i reforma P. D. Kiseleva, vols. 1–2. Moscow-Leningrad, 1946–58.Ignatovich, I. I. Krest’ianskoe dvizhenie v Rossii v pervoi chetverti XIX v. Moscow, 1963.Indova, E. N. Krepostnoe khoziaistvo v nachale XIX v. Moscow, 1955.Koval’chenko, I. D. Russkoe krepostnoe krest’ianstvo v pervoi polovine XIX v. Moscow, 1967.Linkov, Ia. I. Ocherki istorii krest’ianskogo dvizheniia v Rossii v 1825–1861 gg. Moscow, 1952.Sivkov, K. V. Ocherki po istorii krepostnogo khoziaistva i krest’ianskogo dvizheniia v Rossii v pervoi polovine XIX v. Moscow, 1951.Stashevskii, E. D. Istoriia dokapitalisticheskoi renty na Pravoberezhnoi Ukraine XVIII–pervoi poloviny XIX v. Moscow, 1968.Fadeev, A. V. Ocherki ekonomicheskogo razvitiia stepnogo Predkavkaz’ia v doreformennyi period. Moscow, 1957.Fedorov, V. A. Pomeshchich’i krest’iane Tsentral’no-promyshlennogo raiona Rossii v kontse XVIII–pervoi polovine XIX v. Moscow, 1974.Fedorov, V. A. Soldatskoe dvizhenie v gody dekabristov. 1816–1825 gg. Moscow, 1963.
International relations and foreign policy
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Vneshniaia politika Rossii XIX i nachala XX vv., series 1: 1801–1815, vols. 1–9. Moscow, 1960–72.
M. P. Lazarev: Dokumenty, vols. 1–3. Moscow, 1952–61.
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Georgiev, V. A. Vneshniaia politika Rossii na Blizhnem Vostoke v kontse 30-kh–nachale 40-kh gg. XIX v. Moscow, 1975.Ioannisian, A. R. Prisoedinenie Zakavkaz’ia k Rossii i mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia v nachale XIX st. Yerevan, 1958.Kiniapina, N. S. Vneshniaia politika Rossii 1-i poloviny XIX v. Moscow, 1963.Sirotkin, V. G. Duel’ dvukh diplomatii: Rossiia i Frantsiia v 1801–1812 gg. Moscow, 1966.Fadeev, A. V. Rossiia i Vostochnyi krizis 20-kh gg. XIX v. Moscow, 1958.Khalfin, N. A. Rossiia i khanstva Srednei Azii (pervaia polovina XIX v.). Moscow, 1974.
Patriotic War of 1812
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Borodino, 1812–1962: Dok-ty, pis’ma, vospominaniia. Moscow, 1962.
General Bagration: Sb. dok-tov i mat-lov. [Leningrad] 1945.
M. I. Kutuzov: Dok-ty, vols. 1–5. Moscow, 1950–56.
Listovki Otechestvennoi voiny 1812 g.: Sb. dok-tov. Moscow, 1962.
Narodnoe opolchenie v Otechestvennoi voine 1812 g.: Sb. dok-tov. Moscow, 1962.
Pokhod russkoi armii protiv Napoleona v 1813 g. i osvobozhdenie Germanii: Sb. dok-tov. Moscow, 1964.
===MEMOIRS===
Davydov, D. V. Voennye zapiski. Soch. Moscow, 1962.Kolenkur, A. Memuary: Pokhod Napoleona v Rossiiu. Moscow, 1943.Chicherin, A. V. Dnevnik, 1812–1813. [Moscow, 1966.] (Translated from French.)
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Babkin, V. I. Narodnoe opolchenie v Otechestvennoi voine 1812 g. Moscow, 1962.Beskrovnyi, L. G. Otechestvennaia voina 1812 g. Moscow, 1962.Bogdanovich, M. I. Istoriia Otechestvennoi voiny 1812 g., vols. 1–3. St. Petersburg, 1859–60.Zhiliri, P. A. Gibel’ napoleonovskoi armii v Rossii, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1974.
Osvoboditel’naia voina 1813 g.: Sb. st. Moscow, 1965.Tarle, E. V. 1812 god. Moscow, 1959.
1812 god: K 150-letiiu Otechestvennoi voiny: Sb. st. Moscow, 1962.
Crimean War (1853–56)
===SOURCES===
Vitse-admiral Kornilov: Sb. dok-tov. Moscow, 1947.
P. S. Nakhimov: Dok-ty i mat-ly. Moscow, 1954.Pirogov, N. I. Sevastopol’skie pis’ma i vospominaniia. Moscow, 1950.
===REFERENCES===
Admiral Nakhimov: St. iocherki. Moscow, 1954.Bestuzhev, I. V. Krymskaia voina 1853–1856 gg. Moscow, 1956.Gorev, L. Voina 1853–1856 gg. i oborona Sevastopolia. Moscow, 1955.Zaionchkovskii, A. M. Vostochnaia voina 1853–1856 gg. v sviazi s sovremennoi ei politicheskoi obstanovkoi, vols. 1–2; Prilozheniia, vols. 1–2. St. Petersburg, 1908–13.Semin, G. I. Oborona Sevastopolia 1854–55. Moscow, 1962.Tarie, E. V. Krymskaia voina, vols. 1–2,2nd ed. Moscow-Leningrad, 1950.
Sociopolitical thought and the revolutionary movement
The Decembrists
===SOURCES===
Vosstanie dekabristov: Mat-ly i dok-ty, vols. 1–14. Moscow-Leningrad, 1925–76.
Izbr. sotsial’no-politicheskie i filosofski proizvedeniia dekabristov, vols. 1–3. Moscow, 1951.
===MEMOIRS===
Vospominaniia Bestuzhevykh. Moscow-Leningrad, 1951.Volkonskaia, M. N. Zapiski, 2nd ed. Chita, 1960.Gorbachevskii, I. I. Zapiski i pis’ma. Moscow, 1963.Iakushkin, I. D. Zapiski, stal’i, pis’ma. Moscow, 1951.
===REFERENCES===
Dekabristy i ikh vremia. Moscow-Leningrad, 1951.
Dekabristy i russkaia kul’tura. Leningrad, 1975.Druzhinin, N. M. Dekabrist Nikita Murav’ev. Moscow, 1933.Landa, S. S. Dukh revoliutsionnykh preobrazovanii. Moscow, 1975.Lebedev, N. M. Pestel’—ideolog i rukovoditel’ dekabristov. Moscow, 1972.
Literaturnoe nasledie dekabristov. Leningrad, 1975.Nechkina, M. V. Dvizhenie dekabristov, vols. 1–2. Moscow, 1955.Nechkina, M. V. Den’ 14 dekabria 1825 goda, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1975.Okun’s, S. B. Dekabrist M. S. Lunin. Leningrad, 1962.Orlik, O. V. Dekabristy i evropeiskoe osvoboditel’noe dvizhenie. Moscow, 1975.
Ocherki iz istorii dvizheniia dekabristov. Moscow, 1954.Pavliuchenko, E. A. V dobrovol’nom izgnanii. Moscow, 1976.Syroechkovskii, B. E. Iz istorii dvizheniia dekabristov. Moscow, 1969.Chernov, S. N. U istokov russkogo osvoboditel’nogo dvizheniia. Saratov, 1960.Shchegolev, P. E. Dekabristy. Moscow-Leningrad, 1926.Eidel’man, N. Ia. Apostol Sergei. Moscow, 1975.Eidel’man, N. Ia. Lunin. Moscow, 1970.
===BIBLIOGRAPHIC MATERIALS===
Chentsov, N. M. Vosstanie dekabristov. Moscow-Leningrad, 1929.[Eimontova, R. G., and A. A. Solennikova.] Dvizhenie dekabristov: Ukazatel’ literatury, 1928–1959. Moscow, 1960.Kopylova, V. N. Dvizhenie dekabristov: Bibliografich. spisok knig i statei na russkom iazyke za 1960–1975 gg. Moscow, 1975.
Revolutionary Democrats
===SOURCES===
Belinskii, V. G. Poln. sobr. soch., vols. 1–13. Moscow, 1953–59.Herzen, A. I. Sobr. soch., vols. 1–30. Moscow, 1954–65.
Delo petrashevtsev, vols. 1–3. Moscow-Leningrad, 1937–51.Ogarev, N. P. Izbr. sotsial’no-politicheskie i filosofskie proizv., vols. 1–2. Moscow, 1952–56.
Russkie prosvetiteli (ot Radishcheva do dekabristov), vols. 1–2. Moscow, 1966.
Filosofskie i obshchestvenno-politicheskie proizvedeniia petrashevtsev. [Moscow] 1953.
V. G. Belinskii v vospominaniiakh sovremennikov. Moscow, 1962.
Gertsen v vospominaniiakh sovremennikov. Moscow, 1956.
===REFERENCES===
Verzhbitskii, V. G. Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie v russkoi armii (s 1826 po 1859 g.). Moscow, 1964.Volodin, A. I. Nachalo sotsialisticheskoi mysli v Rossii. Moscow, 1966.Zaionchkovskii, P. A. Kirillo-Mefodievskoe obshchestvo (1846–1847). Moscow, 1959.Leikina-Svirskaia, V. R. Petrashevtsy. Moscow, 1965.Malinin, V. A., and M. I. Sidorov. Predshestvenniki nauchnogo sotsializma v Rossii. Moscow, 1963.Nifontov, A. S. Rossiia v 1848 g. Moscow, 1949.Orlik, O. V. Peredovaia Rossiia i revoliutsionnaia Frantsiia. Moscow, 1973.Smirnov, A. F. Revoliutsionnye sviazi narodov Rossii i Pol’shi: 30–60 gg. XIX v. Moscow, 1962.Usakina, T. I. Petrashevtsy i literaturno-obshchestvennoe dvizhenie sorokovykhgodov XIX v. Saratov, 1965.
Culture of the peoples of Russia
===REFERENCES===
Vateishvili, D. L. Russkaia obshchestvennaia mysl’ i pechat’ na Kavkaze v pervoi treti XIX v. Moscow, 1973.Virginskii, V. S. Tvortsy novoi tekhniki v krepostnoi Rossii, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1962.Oreshkin, V. V. Vol’noe ekonomicheskoe obshchestvo v Rossii, 1765–1917. Moscow, 1963.Poznanskii, V. V. Ocherk formirovaniia russkoi natsional’noi kul’tury: Pervaia polovina XIX v. Moscow, 1975.Fadeev, A. V. Ideinye sviazi i kul’turnaia zhizn’ narodov doreformennoi Rossii. Moscow, 1966.
The Caucasus
===SOURCES===
Dvizhenie gortsev Sev.-Vostochnogo Kavkaza v 20–50-kh gg. XIX v.: Sb. dok-tov. Makhachkala, 1959.
Dokumenty po istorii Balkarii: 40–90-egg. XIX v. Nal’chik, 1959.
Kolonial’naia politika rossiiskogo tsarizma v Azerbaidzhane v 20–60-kh gg. XIX v., part 1. Moscow-Leningrad, 1936.
===REFERENCES===
Bliev, M. M. Prisoedinenie Sev. Osetii k Rossii. Ordzhonikidze, 1959.Grigorian, Z. T. Prisoedinenie Vostochnoi Armenii k Rossii v nachale XIX v. Moscow, 1959.Dzidzariia, G. A. Prisoedinenie Abkhazii k Rossii i ego istoricheskoe znachenie. Sukhumi, 1960.Kumykov, T. Kh. Prisoedinenie Kabardy k Rossii i ego progressivnye posledstviia. Nal’chik, 1965.Nevskaia, V. P. Prisoedinenie Cherkesii k Rossii i ego sotsial’no-politicheskie posledstviia. Cherkessk, 1956.
O dvizhenii gortsev pod rukovodstvom Shamilia: Mat-ly sessii Dagestans kogo filiala AN ASSR 4–7 okt. 1956 g. Makhachkala, 1957.
Prisoedinenie Azerbaidzhana k Rossii i ego progressivnye posledstviia v oblastiekonomiki i kul’tury (XIX–nach. XXv.). Baku, 1955.Smirnov, N. A. Miuridizm na Kavkaze. Moscow, 1963.Collapse of serfdom. The fall of serfdom, made official by the government’s statutes of Feb. 19, 1861, marked the end of the feudal-serf stage of development and the beginning of the capitalist stage of development in Russia. The chief factor that made the abolition of serfdom inevitable was the “force of economic development which was drawing Russia on to the path of capitalism” (Lenin, Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 20, p. 173). Under its influence, by the mid-19th century pomeshchik serf owners could no longer retain the old economic forms, which had crumbled. The immediate circumstances compelling the tsarist government to find ways of strengthening the economic and political position of the pomeshchik class were Russia’s defeat in the Crimean War and the increasing number of peasant uprisings.
In the spring of 1854, when a ukase on the formation of a naval home guard was promulgated, thousands of peasant serfs abandoned work and headed for the cities. After the publication of a manifesto in 1855 on recruitment for a state home guard, a peasant movement known as the Kiev Kazatchina began in the Ukraine. The peasants interpreted the tsarist decrees as a promise of freedom in exchange for voluntary military service. In the summer of 1856, after the conclusion of the war, bands of peasants in several districts of Ekaterinoslav and Kherson provinces, each numbering in the hundreds or even thousands, moved into the Crimea; they had believed rumors that in Tavriia (Tavrida) the tsar was distributing land to voluntary settlers, who were to be free of the power of the pomeshchiki. The peasant movement embodied demands for land and liberty, demands that would soon be formulated by Ogarev. More than 270 peasant disturbances took place in 1856 and 1857,528 in 1858, and 938 in 1859.
The peasant movement found sympathizers among the democratic intelligentsia, whose leaders in the late 1850’s and early 1860’s were Herzen and N. G. Chernyshevskii. Herzen established the Free Russian Printing House in London in 1853, and over a period beginning in 1855 he published the collection Poliarnaia zvezda (Polar Star) at irregular intervals; in 1857 he and Ogarev began publishing the newspaper Kolokol (The Bell). The two men formulated a program for social change in Russia that envisioned the abolition of serfdom—freeing the peasants from the pomeshchiki and allotting land to peasants in return for redemption payments—and the democratization of the social structure. Although they admitted that serfdom could be overthrown from below, through a revolutionary struggle of the peasantry, Herzen and Ogarev in the prereform period placed considerable faith in reforms from above.
The revolutionary agitation carried out by Herzen was expanded by the revolutionary raznochintsy (intellectuals of no definite class), headed by Chernyshevskii. In 1853, Chernyshevskii assumed a leading position with the journal Sovremennik (The Contemporary) and began arguing passionately for the abolition, through revolutionary means, of the autocracy and pomeshchik landownership; he favored granting land to the peasants gratis. Although he did not deny the importance of government reforms, he regarded them not as a set of fundamental changes but rather as a by-product of the revolutionary struggle. The revolutionary-democratic camp, which objectively expressed the aspirations of the peasant masses, coalesced on the very eve of the abolition of serfdom and became independent of the liberal-pomeshchik camp.
The liberals, who included K. D. Kavelin, B. N. Chicherin, A. I. Koshelev, lu. F. Samarin, and A. M. Unkovskii, supported not only the emancipation of the peasants, who were to receive land in return for a redemption payment, but also the placement of limitations on the autocracy. Supporters of serfdom, who comprised a majority of the pomeshchiki, were forced to go along with the abolition of serfdom but insisted that pomeshchik land-ownership be retained; they opposed any limitation on the power of the tsar. The struggle between the adherents of serfdom and the liberals that took place as the peasant reform was being readied was “a struggle waged exclusively over the extent and the forms of the proposed concessions” (ibid., p. 174). Both parties objectively expressed the striving of the pomeshchiki to direct Russia’s development along the pomeshchik, or Prussian, path of agrarian-capitalist evolution.
At the turn of the 1860’s a revolutionary situation emerged in the country; it did not, however, develop into a revolution. At the time, there was no revolutionary class in Russia capable of galvanizing the masses and leading them forward. Under the influence of the liberals and the partisans of serfdom, emancipation was carried out from above, by Emperor Alexander II (ruled 1855–81).
The Peasant Reform of 1861 freed 22.5 million peasants belonging to the pomeshchiki. The foundation of the class dominance of the nobility—pomeshchik landownership—was preserved. Under the new system of allotment landownership, the total area of the land held by the peasants was considerably less than the area of their allotments, or nadely, before 1861. The peasants in 27 provinces lost about 4 million desiatinas, or 16 percent of the total land held by them before the reform. The total area of the otrezki (parcels of land taken away by the reform) was particularly large in the provinces of Saratov, where it constituted 42.4 percent of the land held by the peasants before the reform, Samara (41.3 percent), Ekaterinoslav (37.3 percent), Poltava (37.4 percent), and Kharkov (28.3 percent) and in the provinces of the central chernozem region (more than 20 percent). As a rule, the lands taken away were indispensible to the peasant: pastures and hayfields.
The peasants paid far more than the actual value of the reduced allotments. In the nonchernozem provinces the redemption price of the land was nearly double the market price (342 million rubles as compared to 180 million rubles); in the chernozem provinces it was nearly 50 percent above the market price (342 million rubles as compared to 284 million rubles). Only in the western provinces was the price just slightly higher than the real value of the land (183 million rubles, as compared to 170 million rubles). Overall, the redemption price of the land exceeded its actual value by 323 million rubles, or 59 percent. In fact, under the terms of the redemption operation, the peasants ended up paying even more. About 3 million peasants, primarily former dvorovye krest’iane (peasants belonging to the tsar and his family), received no land at all. More than 500,000 peasants, known as krest’iane-darstvenniki, were given redemption-free land, but the allotments they received were very small.
In the spring of 1861, after the statutes of February 19 had been promulgated, the revolutionary situation entered its most acute phase. The Third Section recorded peasant disturbances on 1,176 estates in 1861; in 337 instances military force was used to quell the disturbances, and in 191 instances peasants offered active resistance, which took such forms as attacking the soldiers and resisting arrest. The most serious events were the Bezdna Uprising of 1861 and the Kandeevka Uprising of 1861.
In Kolokol, Herzen harshly criticized the reform. The revolutionary democrats came forward with revolutionary appeals, among them Chernyshevskii’s proclamation “Greetings to the Landlords’ Peasants From Their Well-wishers” (1861), the pamphlets entitled Velikoruss (Great Russian; 1861), M. L. Mikhailov and N. V. Shelgunov’s proclamation “To the Younger Generation” (1861), and P. G. Zaichnevskii’s proclamation “Young Russia” (1862). A number of secret revolutionary organizations were formed at this time, such as the Committee of Russian Officers in Poland and revolutionary groups in Moscow, Kazan, Perm’, Saratov, and Nizhny Novgorod. They subsequently merged with the Land and Liberty society of the 1860’s. A major event of the revolutionary struggle was the Polish Uprising of 1863–64, which engulfed Poland, Lithuania, and Western Byelorussia.
In response to these developments, the government pursued a twofold policy. On the one hand, it suppressed with armed force the various uprisings and disturbances and arrested the leading ideologists of the movement: such figures as Chernyshevskii, N. A. Serno-Solov’evich, and D. I. Pisarev were arrested in St. Petersburg in July 1862. On the other hand, it continued to carry out bourgeois reforms. The peasant reform was extended to the approximately 2 million appanage peasants in 1863 and to the approximately 18 million state peasants in 1866. Autonomy was restored to the universities in 1863. Implementation of the Zemstvo Reform of 1864 and the Judicial Reform of 1864 began. Regulations for primary public schools and a statute on secondary schools were ratified in 1864. The Provisional Rules on the Press, adopted in 1865, mitigated somewhat the oppressiveness of the censorship. Subsequently, the Municipal Reform of 1870 and the military reforms of the 1860’s and 1870’s were carried out. On Apr. 4, 1866, D. V. Karakozov, a member of the revolutionary Ishutin circle, attempted to assassinate Alexander II. The result was an increase in reaction, inspired chiefly by P. A. Shuvalov, chief of staff of the Corps of Gendarmes; D. A. Tolstoi, the minister of education; and K. I. Palen, the minister of justice.
The abolition of serfdom, together with the other bourgeois reforms of the 1860’s and 1870’s, paved the way for a more rapid development of capitalism. The bourgeois reforms gradually adapted Russia’s sociopolitical structure to the demands of an emerging capitalist economy. Lenin noted, “When we contemplate, in a general way, the change in the entire system of the Russian state in 1861, we are bound to admit that that change was a step in the transformation of feudal monarchy into a bourgeois monarchy. This is true not only from the economic, but also from the political point of view. We need only recall the nature of the reforms in the sphere of the judiciary, administration, local self-government, etc., which followed the Peasant Reform of 1861, to see the correctness of this statement” (ibid., pp. 165–66).
The bourgeois reforms carried out by the tsarist government clearly bore the stamp of the feudal order. In addition, vestiges of serfdom—notably autocracy and pomeshchik latifundia, as well as the otrabotki (labor service) associated with the latter—retarded the sociopolitical development of postreform Russia. The process that determined the shape and nature of the country’s evolution, however, was the development of capitalism.
Socioeconomic development of postreform Russia. The postreform period of Russian history was dominated by industrial (pre-monopoly) capitalism. In the economic sphere, the period witnessed the rise of large-scale industrial production; in the social sphere, it saw the formation of the basic classes of a bourgeois society. In Western Europe the industrial revolution had been preceded by a more or less radical agrarian revolution that determined which path of development each country would follow in creating a capitalist system of land cultivation: the American path, based on peasant landownership, or the Prussian path, based on landownership by large-scale landlords. In Russia, however, the industrial revolution was accomplished at a time when neither of the two main paths of agrarian-capitalist evolution had yet emerged victorious. The two major historical eras of capitalism, which were separated by a century or more in countries where capitalism developed at an early stage, occurred simultaneously in Russia, which, standing at the threshold of the bourgeois democratic revolution, entered the period of imperialism together with the most powerful states of the West.
In industry, the development of capitalism accelerated considerably after 1861; it was characterized by the completion of the industrial revolution in manufacturing, by the rapid construction of railroads, and by the development of heavy industry, that is, the fuel and metallurgy industry and machine building. Small trades, in which peasants predominated, grew rapidly. At the end of the 19th century there were at least 2 million craftsmen and artisans in European Russia. Data for Perm’ Province provide a picture of the growth rate of small trades: there the number of new establishments increased from 533 in the decade 1855–65, to 1,339 in 1865–75, to 2,652 in 1875–85, to 3,469 in 1885–95 (ibid., vol. 2, p. 343). Comparatively large capitalist establishments of the manufacture type also appeared.
In large-scale manufacturing, much of the output was produced by machines at the turn of the 1880’s. Only 16.4 percent of all textile establishments were large factory-type textile mills, but such mills accounted for 68.8 percent of the workers and 75.7 percent of total output. In the metalworking industry, enterprises with steam engines constituted 24.8 percent of the establishments but accounted for 77.5 percent of the workers and 86.3 percent of total output.
In Western Europe, the formation of a system of large-scale capitalist production had followed a characteristic sequence, beginning with light industry, moving to industries that turned out producer goods, and ending with steam transport; in Russia, this sequence was not observed. Intensive railroad construction took place in European Russia before the industrial revolution had been completed: the total length of railroads exceeded 20,000 km by the early 1880’s, with an average annual increase of 1,500 km between 1865 and 1875. The 1890’s saw an industrial upsurge, with more than 2,500 km of track being laid annually. About 27,000 km of railroad lines went into service between 1893 and 1902, and the total length of the railroads grew to more than 55,000 km. Construction of the Trans-Siberian Railroad began in 1891 and was essentially finished in the early 20th century.
A credit system based on joint-stock banks, which in Europe were a result of the protracted development of capitalist credit, also took shape in an abbreviated time span in Russia, where there were 39 joint-stock banks as early as 1875 and 43 by 1900. All finance ministers of postreform Russia pursued a general policy of protection, especially S. lu. Witte, who served as finance minister from 1892 to 1903. Customs duties were raised in 1882, 1884, and 1885; between 1881 and 1886 customs revenues increased by more than 30 percent, from 85, 763,000 rubles to 112, 447,000 rubles. The continuous rise in tariff rates culminated in the introduction of a protectionist customs tariff in 1891. Between 1891 and 1900 customs taxes amounted to 33 percent of the value of all imported goods. A further increase in indirect taxes came with the introduction, under Witte, of a monopoly on spirits in the second half of the 1890’s. The monopoly soon became an important part of the budget: total revenues from the sale of vodka amounted to 52 million rubles in 1897 and reached 365 million rubles annually by 1903.
These measures were accompanied by an increase in the amount of grain exports, designed to achieve a favorable balance of trade. In the period 1887 to 1892, Russia enjoyed a trade surplus of 1,535, 800,000 rubles, which was used to protect industry, increase the gold reserves, and pay off debts. An enormous amount of money for the development of large-scale industry came from abroad and enabled the government to meet nonproduction expenses. In the period 1861 to 1880, investments in securities totaled 4.5 billion rubles, about 2.5 billion of which was domestic capital and 2 billion foreign. Although Russian capital constituted 53 percent of investment, it accounted for only 28 percent of productive investment; the remaining 72 percent was accounted for by foreign capital.
All this money created a financial well-being that allowed the tsarist government to introduce the gold standard in 1897 and to pursue a policy of “implantation” of capitalism from above, as Lenin characterized the tsarist government’s series of measures designed to accelerate the development of railroad transportation and certain branches of heavy industry (ibid., vol. 20, p. 38). About two-thirds of the railroad system was nationalized in the second half of the 1880’s and the 1890’s; the state constructed railroads, financing them through foreign loans and general revenues. Some 5.5 billion rubles were invested in railroad, industrial, and municipal construction between 1893 and 1903, a 25 percent increase over total investment for the preceding 32 years. In the Donbas and Krivoi Rog area 17 metallurgical plants were built with the help of French and Belgian, as well as some German and British, capital. The largest were the Dnieper Metallurgical Plant of the Southern Russia Dnieper Metallurgical Association, the Druzhkovka Works of the Donets Iron and Steel Company, and the metallurgical works of the Donets-Iur’evka Company. In addition, several large machine-building plants were built in the region, the largest of which were the Kharkov Plant of the Russian Steam Locomotive and Machine Company, the Lugansk Plant of the Gartman Russian Company of Machine-building Plants, and the Nikolaev Plant of the Nikolaev Shipyards, Machine Shops, and Foundries.
The development of the southern mining and metallurgical region marked the completion of the system of large-scale capitalist production, a substantial proportion of whose output—about 30 percent—was now accounted for by heavy industry. Industrial output increased more than sevenfold between 1860 and 1900, when Russia reached the approximate level of industrial development of France with respect to mineral fuel extracted (1.019 billion poods of coal and 706 million poods of petroleum in 1901), pig iron smelted (177 million poods, of which 92 million poods were produced in the south), steel produced (133 million poods, of which 70 million poods were produced in the southern regions), and machinery manufactured (output value of 227 million rubles, including 109 million rubles’ worth of transportation machine-building output).
Production became more concentrated during the industrial upsurge. In 1894 and 1895 large factories—those with more than 100 workers—produced 70.8 percent of industrial output and employed 74 percent of all factory workers; by 1903 such factories accounted for about 76.6 percent of all factory workers. The metallurgical industry of the south was the most highly concentrated of all: its plants, having bypassed the manufacture stage, were from the outset enterprises on a very large scale. The preconditions for the transition to the imperialist stage of development had emerged.
In agriculture, capitalist development took place on both pomeshchik and peasant farms. It was reflected in the colonization of the southern and eastern territories, the commercial specialization and intensification of agriculture, the disintegration of the peasantry as a class, and a gradual shift by the pomeshchiki from the otrabotka system of farming to the capitalist system. In southern and southeastern European Russia, the sown area expanded, and the population was swelled by an influx from the central provinces; increasing numbers of seasonal workers—semiproletarianized peasants from other regions—were exploited.
In the chernozem zone, plantings of cereal export crops—wheat and barley—expanded in the south and southeast; over a 20-year period the amount of grain shipped on railroads doubled, from 311.9 million poods in 1876–78 to 620.5 million poods in 1898–1902.
Other regions specialized in industrial crops: beets were produced in the southwestern and, to a lesser extent, the southern chernozem provinces, flax and potatoes for distilling were grown in 19 provinces of the nonchernozem zone, and cotton was cultivated in Turkestan and Transcaucasia. Commercial livestock raising was also important: dairy husbandry encompassed an area that included the central industrial, Baltic, western, and northern provinces. Southern and southeastern European Russia was a region devoted to the grass fattening of livestock for meat production, using extensive rather than intensive methods.
Agricultural technology moved forward, primarily among the pomeshchiki and kulaks who made the transition to capitalist farming. By the early 20th century, the distribution and ownership of land in the Russian countryside had come into irreconcilable conflict with the requirements of further economic development. Although the total land owned by the pomeshchiki had declined by one-third, they still held 70 million desiatinas, or more than half of all privately owned land. The enormous latifundia not only were preserved, but became larger: 155 large-scale landowners held 16.2 million desiatinas, or more than one-fifth of all privately owned land.
The peasant allotments, on the other hand, were small. In European Russia the peasants held 124 million desiatinas; when cossack lands were added in, the figure was 138 million desiatinas. As a result of population growth, the average allotment per male decreased from 4.8 desiatinas in 1861 to 2.6 desiatinas in 1900. Because of the land shortage, the peasant lands were depleted to a greater extent than those of the pomeshchiki; all the defects of prereform peasant land tenure persisted: land was held in intermingled strips, and the various parts of a holding were sometimes separated by long distances. The quantity of forest and meadow-land held by peasants decreased, and a substantial portion of the peasants had no horses or implements.
The pomeshchiki engaged in capitalist farming—that is, worked the land with their own implements and hired agricultural laborers for part or all of the year—only on a small part of their lands. The remainder was leased to the peasants, who paid 700 million rubles in gold annually for the lease and purchase of land. The old corvée system gave way to the otrabotka system of pomeshchik farming, which was made possible by the presence of an intermediate class of peasants who worked their allotments without help and possessed too little land to provide a more or less tolerable existence. The tsarist government’s agrarian policy was in fact designed to maintain such a state of affairs. The government obstructed migration across the Urals and sought to preserve the peasant commune and the frankpledge. As before, the economic activity and daily life of the peasantry was regulated by courts for the peasant estate, and corporal punishment was still practiced. The agrarian system of semiserfdom that emerged after the reform of 1861 entered a period of crisis. Crop failures, accompanied by famine, occurred in 1889, 1891, and 1892; the famine of 1891 was especially severe. Politically, the crisis of the agrarian system was manifested in an exacerbation of the class struggle of the peasantry.
According to data from the nationwide census of 1897, Russia (excluding Finland) had a total population of 125.6 million, of whom 97 million belonged to the agricultural population, 21.7 million (one-sixth of the population) to the commercial-industrial population, and 6.9 million to the unproductive population. The breakdown of the total population with respect to social structure was as follows: 3 million persons of the upper stratum, which included the big bourgeoisie, the pomeshchiki, and persons of rank; about 23.1 million well-to-do proprietors; about 35.8 million poor proprietors; and about 63.7 million proletarians and semiproletarians.
Although he stressed that “Russia is still very backward, as compared with other capitalist countries, in her economic development,” Lenin stated that “commodity circulation and, hence, commodity production are firmly implanted in Russia. Russia is a capitalist country” (ibid., vol. 3, p. 502).
The main classes of a capitalist society—the bourgeoisie and proletariat—had taken shape by the late 19th century. The Russian big bourgeoisie consisted of two groups, centered in St. Petersburg and Moscow, that were to an extent heterogeneous. The first group, made up primarily of members of the heavy-industrial and banking bourgeoisie, was formed as a result of the implantation of capitalism from above.
The second group, which consisted for the most part of members of the indigenous Russian bourgeoisie, emerged as capitalism developed intensively from below. The common feature in the formation and social complexion of the indigenous Russian bourgeoisie was the inseparable connection of industrial with commercial capital. Differences within the group took the form of a predominance of one or the other of these types of capital: the industrial, primarily textile, bourgeoisie was preeminent in Moscow, and the commercial bourgeoisie in the border regions (the north, the Middle and Lower Volga regions, Siberia, and the Far East).
The big bourgeoisie in heavy industry and transport differed from the indigenous Russian bourgeoisie both in the source of its capital formation and in social origin. The development of heavy industry and transport came about primarily through foreign capital investment and government participation. The ranks of the big bourgeoisie in heavy industry and transport were filled by persons from the poorer strata of the bourgeoisie, military and railroad engineers, upper-level civil servants, and foreign capitalists who settled in Russia.
Industrial development and railroad construction brought about an increase in the size of the proletariat. The mining and manufacturing industries and the railroads of European Russia employed 706,000 workers in 1865, 1, 189,000 in 1879, 1, 432,000 in 1890, and 2, 208,000 in 1900–03. The number of workers in European Russia tripled between 1865 and 1890, whereas the population as a whole increased by 50 percent. In the 1880’s and 1890’s approximately two-fifths of the proletariat in large-scale industry, particularly in the central region, consisted of workers from working-class families; in certain branches of industry the proportion was even higher. Extensive (as opposed to intensive) exploitation of the proletariat prevailed: actual working time amounted to 12–13 hours daily; with breaks for rest and eating added in, the working day lasted 14–15 hours. The hard lot of the proletariat engendered protest and made the working class especially receptive to the dissemination of revolutionary ideas.
New cities and industrial centers were founded in the second half of the 19th century, notably Vernyi (1854), Khabarovsk (1858), Iuzovka (1869–70), and Ashkhabad (1881). The formation of the Russian, Ukrainian, Byelorussian, Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Georgian, Armenian, and Moldavian bourgeois nations was completed. The consolidation of the Azerbaijan, Kazakh, Kirghiz, Tadzhik, Turkmen, and Uzbek nationalities into bourgeois nations accelerated.
Tsarist Russia was among the most reactionary countries of Europe. At its head stood an emperor who possessed absolute power. In terms of class, the country’s state system was a dictatorship of the pomeshchiki. The nobility held most of the high offices in the state apparatus, the army, and the navy. Tsarist Russia was a country characterized by tyranny and police despotism.
Social movement of the 1870’s and 1880’s. Lenin placed the beginning of the second period of the liberation movement in Russia, known as the bourgeois democratic or raznochintsy period, in 1861. The principal figures of the movement were the raznochintsy, who came from the merchantry, the petite bourgeoisie, and the peasantry; its dominant trend was Populism (narodnichestvo, or Narodism). The Populists were divided into three groups, headed by M. A. Bakunin, P. L. Lavrov, and P. N. Tkachev. Bakunin believed that the revolutionary intelligentsia should go to the people, who allegedly were ready to rise up at any moment, and carry out agitation by word and deed designed to incite the people to rebellion. Lavrov maintained that the people were not ready for an uprising; the revolutionary intelligentsia was therefore to carry out extensive preparatory propaganda work designed to create a nationwide revolutionary organization. According to Tkachev, Russian absolutism, which had no roots in Russian socioeconomic reality, could be destroyed by the efforts of a single revolutionary party that enjoyed the sympathy and passive support of the people.
The First International and the Paris Commune of 1871 played an important role in accelerating the pace of revolutionary work in Russia.
In 1869, M. A. Natanson helped found the revolutionary Chaikovskii circle in St. Petersburg; in 1872 the members of the organization undertook propaganda work among the workers of St. Petersburg. A federation of revolutionary circles in such cities as Moscow, Odessa, and Kiev, totaling about 100 people, had formed by 1873. The leading representatives of revolutionary Populism emerged from these groups: S. L. Perovskaia, D. A. Klements, N. A. Charushin, S. S. Sinegub, S. M. Kravchinskii, P. A. Kropotkin, L. E. Shishko, L. A. Tikhomirov, N. A. Morozov, M. F. Frolenko, A. I. Zheliabov, and P. B. Aksel’rod. The circle of A. V. Dolgushin and L. A. Dmokhovskii enjoyed a brief but intensive period of activity, in 1872 and 1873. In Kiev, the organization known as the Southern Rebels included such figures as V. K. Debogorii-Mokrievich.
Lenin wrote, “Effective Narodism reached its peak when, in the seventies, revolutionaries began to ’go among the people’ (the peasantry)” (ibid., vol. 22, p. 304). In 1874 and 1875 propaganda work was conducted in 37 provinces of European Russia, primarily in the Volga Region. The large number of persons arrested or subjected to questioning—about 4,000—testifies to the dimensions of the movement. Because they lacked unified leadership, the Populists engaged for the most part in “itinerant,” or “flying,” propaganda, moving from village to village. The masses of peasants remained indifferent to the appeals of the revolutionaries, thereby dashing the hopes of the Populists.
The peasant movement declined sharply in the first half of the 1870’s, when only about 130 disturbances occurred. Workers’ strikes, on the other hand, became more frequent. More than 140 strikes were recorded between 1866 and 1874, the most serious being the strikes by 800 workers at the Neva Cotton Mill in 1870 and 6,000 weavers at the Krenholm Manufactory in 1872. Taking note of the development of events, the members of the All-Russian Socialist Revolutionary Organization, notably S.I. Bardina, B. A. Kaminskaia, I. S. Dzhabadari, G. F. Zdanovich, and the worker P. A. Alekseev, renounced work in the countryside and undertook propaganda work among the workers of Moscow, Tula, and Ivanovo-Voznesensk, intending to train intermediaries between the intelligentsia and the peasantry. The group was broken up in the fall of 1875. At the Trial of the 50 in 1877, Alekseev delivered a remarkable speech, which Lenin called the great prophecy of a Russian worker-revolutionary (ibid., vol. 4, p. 377).
A secret society called Land and Liberty was founded in St. Petersburg in 1876. Its members, who included A. D. Mikhailov, M. R. Popov, G. V. Plekhanov, Perovskaia, and Kravchinskii, created a centralized organization that Lenin termed “magnificent” (ibid., vol. 6, p. 135). Having determined that the peasantry was not receptive to socialist propaganda, they decided to prepare the peasants gradually for a revolutionary coup. The members of Land and Liberty organized chapters in other cities, propagandized among the intelligentsia and the workers, and established a number of settlements in such provinces as Tambov, Saratov, and Voronezh in order to carry on long-term work among the peasants. This approach also failed to produce the needed results, however, and the settlements gradually became less active.
A profound ideological crisis developed among the members of Land and Liberty. Within the organization a secret group, Liberty or Death, was formed; its members, who included A. A. Kviatkovskii, N. A. Morozov, and A. I. Barannikov, advocated political struggle. The “politicals” created a united organization at a congress in Lipetsk in 1879. An open conflict between the politicals, led by Zheliabov, and the “villagers,” led by Plekhanov, took place at the Voronezh Congress of 1879. Plekhanov, convinced that he had become isolated, quit the congress. The struggle between the two factions came to an end later in the year when Land and Liberty split into two organizations: the Black Partition and the People’s Will.
A revolutionary situation ripened in the country in the late 1870’s and early 1880’s. The poverty and misery of the peasants, who had been plundered by the reform of 1861, became acute during the period that embraced the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78 and the crop failures of 1879 and 1880. The existence of a working-class movement added a dimension that had been absent in the situation of the late 1850’s and early 1860’s. The movement was manifested in strikes of an economic nature and in the participation by the workers of St. Petersburg in the Kazan Demonstration of 1876. Workers staged 88 strikes and 25 disturbances in 1878 and 1879; the most important were the strikes at the New Cotton Mill in St. Petersburg, among whose leaders was P. A. Moiseenko.
In the second half of the 1870’s workers formed their own organizations, the Southern Union of Russian Workers (Odessa, 1875) and the Northern Union of Russian Workers (St. Petersburg, 1878), thereby showing that they had begun to grasp their position in bourgeois society, were becoming conscious of their solidarity with the proletariat of other countries, and were coming to reject a number of Populist ideas. The struggle of the revolutionary forces against the autocracy played a decisive role in the formation of the revolutionary situation. From 1879 to 1881 the Executive Committee of the People’s Will was responsible for eight attempts on the life of Alexander II, including an explosion at the Winter Palace set off by S. N. Khalturin on Feb. 5,1880.
On Mar. 1, 1881, the tsar was mortally wounded by a bomb thrown by I. I. Grinevitskii. Contrary to the expectations of the revolutionaries, no uprisings against the government followed. In a letter to the new tsar, Alexander III (ruled 1881–1894), the members of the People’s Will promised to cease terrorist activity on condition that a general amnesty be granted and representatives of the Russian people be convened to review the existing forms of the state structure and public life. The tsarist government responded with a new wave of repression. Most of the members of the Executive Committee were arrested. Those who had planned or taken part in the assassination, including Zheliabov, Perovskaia, and N. I. Kibal’chich, were hanged. A tsarist manifesto stressing the immutable nature of the autocracy was promulgated on Apr. 29, 1881. Lenin wrote, “For the second time since the emancipation of the peasants, the revolutionary tide was swept back, and following it and as a consequence of it, the liberal movement for a second time gave way to reaction” (ibid., vol. 5, p. 45). The Statute on Measures for the Protection of State Order and Public Tranquillity was ratified on Aug. 14, 1881. Although the statute was supposed to expire at the end of three years, it was repeatedly extended, right up to February 1917. New police institutions, known as departments for the protection of public security and order, were established in Moscow and Warsaw.
On Dec. 28, 1881, the government passed laws that brought the peasant reform to completion: redemption payments were to be lowered as of June 1, 1882, and all temporarily obligated peasants were to begin redeeming allotments as of Jan. 1, 1883. The Bank of the Peasantry (Peasant Land Bank) was opened in 1882. Subsequent legislation regarding the peasantry was patently reactionary and served to reinforce methods of exploitation that resembled those of the prereform period: restrictions were placed on the dissolution of peasant households in 1886, limits were imposed on migration in 1889, the repartition of land in the peasant commune was restricted in 1893, and peasant allotments were declared inalienable in 1893.
The tsarist government sought to enhance the position of the pomeshchiki. The Bank of the Nobility (Noble Land Bank), established in 1885, granted loans to the nobility on favorable terms. A law passed in 1886 protected the interests of pomeshchiki who hired workers.
Temporary regulations on the press that were issued in August 1882 sharply curtailed the subjects that periodicals were permitted to discuss. Several newspapers, including Moskovskii telegraf (Moscow Telegraph), Golos (The Voice), Strana (The Country), and the journal Otechestvennye zapiski (Notes of the Fatherland) were shut down. In 1884, for the first time, a purge of the public libraries was carried out, during which 133 different books were removed. A new university statute was promulgated in August 1884 that abolished the autonomy of the universities. On Mar. 1, 1887, an attempt was made on the life of Alexander III. (Lenin’s brother A. I. Ul’ianov took part in the attempted assassination and was executed on May 8, 1887.) Soon thereafter, the Ministry of Education issued a circular calling for the dismissal from Gymnasiums of those students who exercised “a bad influence on their schoolmates” and for a cutback in the number of children admitted from the democratic strata of the population. Tuition fees were raised, and many outstanding scholars were dismissed from or voluntarily left the universities.
In the late 1880’s and early 1890’s the government implemented a series of counterreforms. Government trusteeship was strengthened, and the authority of the pomeshchiki over the peasants restored, by a law of 1889 on the zemskie nachal’niki (land captains). The role of the zemstvos (district and provincial assemblies) was restricted by a counterreform of the zemstvo institutions in 1890. The Municipal Statute of 1892 decreased the independence of, and gave the nobility a larger role in, the bodies of local self-government. The government limited the scope of jury courts by removing political cases from their competence.
The forces of reaction could not restrain the mounting proletarian struggle, however. Secret but highly energetic work was carried out to develop a new revolutionary ideology. Lenin wrote, “It was in that period that Russian revolutionary thought worked hardest, and laid the groundwork for the Social-Democratic world-outlook” (ibid., vol. 12, p. 331).
Working-class movement of the 1880’s and early 1890’s; beginning of the proletarian period of the liberation movement. The completion of the industrial revolution and the formation of the industrial proletariat as a class within bourgeois society caused the working-class movement in the 1880’s and first half of the 1890’s to become more organized and forceful. About 100 strikes and more than 50 disturbances were recorded in the first half of the 1880’s. The largest strikes took place at the Khludov Cotton Mill in the village of Iartsevo in Smolensk Province (1880), in Kolomna District and Serpukhov (1880), at the Derbenev Mill in Ivanovo-Voznesensk (1882), and, most notably, in what is now Orekhovo-Zuevo (the Morozov strike of 1885).
The government responded to the rise of the working-class movement by passing a law on June 3, 1886, that set up a system of fines for strikers. In addition, the government established the Main Board on Factories and Mines, whose representatives—the factory inspectors—were assigned the task of taking measures to avert strikes and of calling strikers to account. In the second half of the 1880’s there were about 160 strikes and more than 140 disturbances, most in Moscow and Vladimir provinces; in the first half of the 1890’s there were 181 strikes and 83 disturbances. The workers of the Urals, the south, and the western provinces were drawn into the movement. The growing class solidarity and political consciousness of the proletariat was manifested in the May 1 celebrations: the first May Day demonstrations in the Russian Empire were held by the workers of Poland (1890) and St. Petersburg (1891).
The strike movement in the 1880’s and the first half of the 1890’s, which paved the way for the development of a mass working-class movement, was a major factor in leading the Russian liberation movement out of the dead end that resulted from the crisis of Populism: it facilitated the shift of progressive members of the Russian intelligentsia to Marxism.
As early as the 1860’s and 1870’s, Marxist literature had gained some currency among the Russian revolutionary-democratic intelligentsia. A group of Russian émigrés in Switzerland became acquainted with Marxist ideas in the late 1860’s and formed the Russian Section of the First International. The first volume of Das Kapital was published legally in Russia in 1872. In an effort to combat Populist ideology, the dissemination of scientific socialism began; in this regard, an important role was played by Plekhanov and the group Liberation of Labor founded by him in 1883. The Marxist groups of D. N. Blagoev (late 1883), P. V. Tochisskii (1885), and M. I. Brusnev (1889) were established in St. Petersburg, and N. E. Fedoseev formed a Marxist group in Kazan in 1888. The Marxist circles and groups, which maintained only weak ties with the working-class movement, limited themselves to carrying out propaganda work within a narrow stratum of progressive workers.
It was Lenin who brought together the working-class movement and socialism. In 1894 he published the pamphlet What the “Friends of the People” Are and How They Fight the Social Democrats, an attack on Populism; in 1895 he published The Economic Content of Narodnichestvo and the Criticism of It in Mr. Struve’s Book, an attack on legal Marxism. Also in 1895, Lenin and a group of Marxists founded the St. Petersburg League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class, an organization with a unified leadership, a clear delineation of party duties, and strict discipline. It was at this time that “a steady workers’ movement, linked with Social-Democracy, began” (ibid., vol. 25, p. 94) and the proletarian period of the liberation movement in Russia commenced, with the Russian working class replacing the raznochintsy intelligentsia as the main force in the revolutionary struggle. As the mass working-class movement of the second half of the 1890’s developed, Social Democratic organizations were founded and gained strength, notably the Moscow Workers’ Union, the Ivanovo-Voznesensk Workers’ Union, and the leagues of struggle for the emancipation of the working class in Kiev and Ekaterinoslav. A Marxist party, the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, was founded at the First Congress of the RSDLP, held in Minsk in 1898.
Foreign and colonial policy of the tsarist government in the second half of the 19th century. The tsarist government’s defeat in the Crimean War substantially changed the world balance of power. Russia found itself isolated and deprived of its status as a major power. It had to pursue its foreign policy objectives at a time when the leading powers were seeking to divide up the world and when France and an ascendant Germany were competing for hegemony in Europe. Peace negotiations with China secured the Amur Region and the Primor’e for Russia under the Aigun Treaty of 1858 and the Peking Russo-Chinese Treaty of 1860. Vladivostok, founded in 1860, became the base of the Siberian Naval Flotilla in 1871. Russia’s weak position on the Pacific Ocean and its financial difficulties forced the tsarist government to sell Alaska and other Russian possessions in America to the USA in 1867; in 1868 the Russian-American Company was dissolved. Under a treaty signed with Japan in 1875, Sakhalin became solely a Russian possession, and the Kuril Islands were ceded to Japan. Russia’s military and diplomatic confrontations in the second half of the 19th century occurred primarily in the Balkans, where the struggle for independence waged by the peoples under Turkish domination brought the great powers into conflict, and in Middle Asia, where Russia’s chief opponent was Great Britain.
The main task of Russian foreign policy was to remove the restrictions that had been imposed by the Treaty of Paris. To this end, Prince A. M. Gorchakov, who had been appointed foreign minister in 1856, began exploiting the conflicts among the leading European powers through diplomatic means. He started by effecting a rapprochement with France, which, because of the deterioration in its relations with Austria, was eager to enlist Russia on its side. As a result, Russia broke out of its isolation and enhanced its prestige in the Balkans. Attempts at diplomatic intervention in Polish affairs by France, Great Britain, and Austria during the Polish Uprising of 1863–64 led to a rapprochement between Russia and Prussia; in 1863 the two countries signed a convention permitting either’s troops to cross the Russo-Prussian border in pursuit of insurgents. After Prussia’s defeat of Austria and the formation of the North German Confederation in 1866, Russo-Prussian relations became even closer. At a meeting in Bad Ems in 1870, Alexander II promised to keep Austria neutral in the event of a Franco-Prussian war, and William I promised to support Russian interests in the Middle East and not to oppose the abrogation of terms in the Treaty of Paris inconvenient to Russia. The surrender of the French Army under Napoleon III in September 1870 created a genuine opportunity to deneutralize the Black Sea. In October 1870 the Russian government, in a series of documents known as Gorchakov’s circulars, reasserted its rights on the Black Sea, a position that was upheld by the London Straits Convention of 1871.
The suppression of the Polish Uprising and rapprochement with Prussia left the tsarist government free to pursue a policy of expansion in Middle Asia. As a result of campaigns against the khanates of Kokand (1865–66), Bukhara (1866–68), and Khiva (1873) and the crushing of a revolt in Kokand in 1876, the Kokand Khanate collapsed, Bukhara and Khiva acknowledged themselves vassals of Russia, and the governor-generalship of Turkestan was formed in 1876 on the territory occupied by Russian troops in southern Kazakhstan and Middle Asia.
Russia’s active policy in Middle Asia strained relations with Great Britain. A meeting between William I, Alexander II, and Franz Josef in September 1872 led to the formation of the League of the Three Emperors, which was based not on common goals but on mutual fear and the desire of the three parties to prevent any two of them from turning on the third. The network of relations described above was reflected in the Balkan crisis of the 1870’s, which began with a popular uprising in Hercegovina in the summer of 1875. An uprising in Bulgaria that followed in 1876 was put down with extreme cruelty by Turkey, against which Serbia and Montenegro declared war. Efforts by Russian diplomacy to end the conflict through peaceful means were unsuccessful, and the Russo-Turkish War of 1877 began. The war ended with the Treaty of San Stefano of 1878, whose terms were altered to the detriment of Russia and the Slavic states of the Balkan Peninsula at the Congress of Berlin of 1878.
Russia’s relations with Austria-Hungary and Germany deteriorated after the congress: the two countries entered into a secret alliance against Russia and France in October 1879, in which they were joined by Italy in 1882. Hostile relations with Great Britain forced Russia to renew the League of the Three Emperors.
The intensive and extensive development of capitalism, as well as British expansionism in Middle Asia, prompted the tsarist government to renew its activities in that region. In the mid-1880’s the governor-generalship of Turkestan was enlarged when Russia annexed Turkmenia. The Russian state now bordered Afghanistan, whose foreign policy had come under British control as a result of the Anglo-Afghan War of 1878–80. Seeking to expand its sphere of influence north of Afghanistan, Great Britain provoked a war between that country and Russia. As Lenin noted, Russia found itself “on the verge of war with Britain” (ibid., vol. 28, p. 668). Under pressure from Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy, and France, the Turkish sultan declared that he would not permit British ships to enter the Black Sea. The British government, realizing that it could not form a military coalition against Russia, made concessions. An Anglo-Russian agreement signed in London on Aug. 29 (Sept. 10), 1885, defined the Russo-Afghan border in general terms. On June 10 (22), 1887, representatives of Russia and Great Britain signed a protocol in St. Petersburg that conclusively delineated the border.
The last concerted action by the League of the Three Emperors was a diplomatic move against Great Britain. After the Bulgarian crisis of 1885–87, which resulted in, despite Russian objections, the placement of the German prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg on the Bulgarian throne, Russia’s influence in the Balkans waned. In addition, Russo-Austrian relations cooled dramatically.
Economic relations between Russia and Germany deteriorated as a result of a customs war during which each side increased duties on the other’s goods. In the fall of 1887, Russian securities thrown on the German money market were bought up by Paris banks. Russia floated several large loans on the Paris money market in 1888 and 1889. The Paris exchange became one of Russia’s main sources of capital. As a result of German overtures to Great Britain and the renewal of the Triple Alliance of 1882 in May 1891, the economic rapprochement between Russia and France emerged as an important step toward the conclusion of the Franco-Russian Alliance, which was formalized in December 1893 when the two countries ratified a military convention. The European political realignment had been essentially completed. Two mighty coalitions had taken shape in Europe, with Great Britain left on the outside. In May 1897, Russia and Austria-Hungary signed an agreement on preserving the status quo in the Balkans.
In 1895, Russia and Great Britain reached an understanding on their spheres of influence in the Pamirs that defined the border between the Bukhara Khanate and Afghanistan. The demarcation of the boundaries of the Russian Empire was completed. By the end of the 19th century, Russia encompassed an area of 22.4 million sq km and, according to the 1897 census, had a population of 128.2 million, of whom 93.4 million lived in European Russia, 9.5 million in the Kingdom of Poland, 2.6 million in the Grand Duchy of Finland, 9.3 million in the Caucasus Krai, 5.8 million in Siberia, and 7.7 million in the oblasts of Middle Asia.
Culture of postreform Russia. Several general conditions and basic factors influenced Russia’s cultural development in the second half of the 19th century and contributed to the exacerbation of the struggle between the democratic and bourgeois cultures within the country’s national culture: the development of capitalism, technological progress, the formation of the classes of a capitalist society, the increased mobility of the population and changes in its intellectual outlook, the rise of the democratic movement, and the first stirrings of the proletarian liberation movement.
Education was characterized by general growth and important structural changes. By the time serfdom came to an end, 7 percent of the population was literate; by 1897, the figure was 21 percent. The zemstvos did much to establish primary schools. The secular schools developed far more rapidly than the parochial schools. Secondary education expanded: in the system of the Ministry of Public Education alone, the number of general secondary-education institutions had reached 998 by 1896, 614 for men and 284 for women. Sunday schools, which provided a general education for production workers, peasants, artisans, and nonproduction workers, appeared at the turn of the 1860’s; the first evening courses for workers were instituted in the 1890’s. Capitalist Russia became an increasingly literate country; nonetheless, in the late 1890’s Russia had one secondary school student for every 564 persons, as compared with one for every 300 in France, one for every 202 in Great Britain, one for every 122 in Prussia, and one for every 83 in the USA.
The second half of the 19th century was an important stage in the formation of the Russian raznochintsy intelligentsia. In addition to the already existing universities in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kharkov, Kazan, Kiev, Iur’ev (Tartu), and Warsaw, universities were founded in Odessa and Tomsk. The number of university students increased from 3,500 in 1855 to 25,000 in the mid-1890’s. The Riga Polytechnic Institute opened in the 1860’s, and the Kharkov Technological Institute in 1885. Institutions founded in the 1890’s included the St. Petersburg Electrical Engineering Institute, the Moscow Engineering School (for the training of transport engineers), the Kiev and Warsaw polytechnic institutes, and the Ekaterinoslav Higher Mining School. Notable among higher agricultural scientific and educational institutions was the Petrovskoe Farming and Forestry Academy in Moscow.
The struggle for the materialist world view, which was important to the development of science, was waged by Herzen, Chernyshevskii, N. A. Dobroliubov, and Pisarev in the 1860’s and 1870’s and by the Russian Marxists, whose leader was Plekhanov, inthel880’s.
The natural sciences in Russia kept up with, and in a number of cases outstripped, the development of the natural sciences in Europe. This was the case in mathematics (P. L. Chebyshev, A. A. Markov, and A. M. Liapunov), mechanics (I. A. Vyshnegrad-skii), physics (A. G. Stoletov), chemistry (D. I. Mendeleev), electrical engineering (P. N. Iablochkov), radio (A. S. Popov), and physiology (I. M. Secheno v and E. Metchnikoff).
Russian literature flourished in this period, whose major achievements included the classic novels of I. S. Turgenev, I. A. Goncharov, and F. M. Dostoevsky, the satires of M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, the plays of A. N. Ostrovskii, and the poetry of N. A. Nekrasov. Realistic art reached its pinnacle in the work of L. N. Tolstoy.
Russian music of the second half of the 19th century worked from the tradition of M. I. Glinka. A national realistic orientation was strikingly manifested in the music of the Russian Five: M. A. Balakirev, M. P. Mussorgsky, A. P. Borodin, N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov, and C. A. Cui. The traditions of the Western European musical classics also underwent further development, in the profoundly democratic work of P. I. Tchaikovsky. The period saw the creation of great Russian operatic, symphonic, instrumental, and chamber works. Ballet embarked on a new era as a musical and dramatic genre.
In painting, realism was affirmed in the canvases of the peredvizhniki—the members of the Society of Wandering Art Exhibitions. Leading figures were I. N. Kramskoi, I. E. Repin, A. K. Savrasov, V. G. Perov, V. D. Polenov, V. I. Surikov, and I. I. Shishkin.
Progressive Russian science and art fostered the cultural development of the other peoples of the Russian Empire. In the 19th century, cultural figures of various nationalities came to the fore, such as the Ukrainian poet-revolutionary T. G. Shevchenko, the Byelorussian revolutionary and public figure K. S. Kalinovskii, the Azerbaijani Enlightenment figure M. F. Akhundov, the Armenian revolutionary democrat M. L. Nalbandian, the Georgian writer and public figure I. G. Chavchavadze, the Kazakh Enlightenment figure Ch. Ch. Valikhanov, the Uzbek poet and democrat M. A. Mukimi, and the Latvian writer and democrat J. Rainis.
Imperialist stage of capitalist development. Russia’s first monopolies, which appeared in the early 1880’s among enterprises that served railroad construction, were the Association of Rail Manufacturers, formed in 1882, and associations of plants that manufactured such products as rail fastenings and structural members for bridges. At the same time, entrepreneurs reached an agreement on producing nails and wire, and a cartel of sugar manufac turers was formed; later, kerosene manufacturers in Baku organized an export syndicate. During the industrial upsurge of the 1890’s the country’s largest banks, such as the St. Petersburg International Bank and the Russian Bank for Foreign Trade, began playing an active role in the financing of industry.
The period 1900 to 1903 was marked by an industrial crisis, during which industrial production fell by 5.7 percent and some 3,000 enterprises shut down. The crisis played a crucial role in the transformation of premonopoly capitalism into imperialism. The number of unemployed at this time exceeded 200,000. Large numbers of monopolistic associations, among which syndicates predominated, were formed during the crisis. In ferrous metallurgy key positions were held by the Prodamet syndicate (Company for the Sale of Goods Produced by Russian Metallurgical Plants; 1902), as well as the Truboprodazha (1902) and Gvozd’ (1903) syndicates, which controlled the sale of pipe and nails, respectively. Nonferrous metallurgy was dominated by the joint-stock company Med’ (Copper); the coal industry by the Produgol’ syndicate (Company for Trade in Mineral Fuel of the Donets Coal Basin), which controlled about 70 percent of all coal sales; and the petroleum industry by the Nobel Mazut cartel (1905–06), which controlled about 80 percent of all kerosene sales.
Machine building was dominated by the Prodparovoz association of steam-locomotive-building plants (1901); the Prodvagon association of plants for the manufacture of rolling stock, which controlled nearly 100 percent of the production of railroad cars; and an association of bridge-building plants (1900). In the sugar industry, the Refiners’ Association was formed in 1900. In St. Petersburg and Lodz, the first manufacturers’ associations were organized in such areas as the cotton, jute, and linen trades. In Russia, as in the developed capitalist countries, monopolies became “one of the foundations of the whole of economic life” (ibid., vol. 27, p. 317). Along with the industrial monopolies, large banking associations were formed, such as the St. Petersburg International Commercial Bank, the Azov-Don Commercial Bank, and, subsequently, the Russian-Asiatic Bank.
Russian monopoly capitalism, although it did not differ essentially from the capitalism of the more developed countries, did exhibit certain specific features. State intervention in economic life led to the early appearance of state-monopolistic tendencies in Russia, which were also reflected in the outright merger of the banking monopolies with the Credit Chancellery of the Finance Ministry and the State Bank, and in state oversight, through these institutions, of private enterprises and banks.
Beginning in the period 1900–03, Russia’s joint-stock commercial banks were the main channel through which foreign capital flowed into the Russian national economy. They came to exert a major influence on the activity of industrial enterprises. Foreign capital investment in the form of stock purchases was oriented primarily toward heavy industry. French and Belgian capital was invested mainly in metallurgy and the coal industry of southern Russia, British capital in the petroleum, copper, and gold-mining industries, and German capital in the heavy industry of the Kingdom of Poland and the Baltic region and in electrical engineering and chemical subsidiaries that had been established in Russia.
In Russia, foreign capital played an essentially different role than it did in countries of the colonial and semicolonial type. The large industrial enterprises that were founded with the help of foreign capital investors were an integral part of the Russian economy, whose interests they did not counterpose.
At the turn of the 20th century the Russian Empire took part in the competition among the imperialist states to divide up the world. Russia’s entry into the imperialist stage of development influenced its foreign policy as well. New methods typical of the imperialist age, such as the granting of loans on terms ruinous to the borrower and the obtaining of concessionary leases, were added to the traditional means employed by states to achieve their ends.
At the same time that it adhered to the policy of maintaining the status quo in the Balkans, Russia moved into Iran and, hoping to secure a monopolistic position there, twice rejected Great Britain’s proposals, in 1899 and 1903, that Iran be divided up into spheres of influence. In 1900, Russian troops took part in the joint intervention by six powers—Germany, Great Britian, France, Italy, Japan, and Russia—in China for the purpose of suppressing the Boxer Rebellion. Russia occupied Manchuria during the military operations, but was unable to maintain its hold over the area. Increasing conflict with Japan led to the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05, which was imperialist on both sides.
The war began in January 1904, when the Japanese Navy suddenly attacked the Russian squadron at Port Arthur (Lüshun). After a heroic defense Port Arthur fell, and the main theater of operations shifted to Manchuria, where the decisive battle was fought at Mukden. On May 14 and 15, 1905, a Russian squadron was resoundingly defeated at the battle of Tsushima. Under the Treaty of Portsmouth, signed on Aug. 23 (Sept. 5), 1905, Russia lost Port Arthur and southern Sakhalin, withdrew its forces from Manchuria, and recognized Korea as a Japanese sphere of influence.
In characterizing the main features of the country’s economic development in the early 20th century, Lenin made special note of the contradiction that “most profoundly of all explains the Russian revolution, namely, the most backward system of land-ownership and the most ignorant peasantry on the one hand, and the most advanced industrial and finance capitalism on the other!” (ibid., vol. 16, p. 417).
Russia had entered the imperialist stage of capitalism; at the same time, it had not yet fully carried out bourgeois reforms, and it remained a country in which “modern capitalist imperialism is enmeshed, so to speak, in a particularly close network of pre-capitalist relations” (ibid., vol. 27, p. 378). Precapitalist relations were evident in the economy, which exhibited extensive vestiges of the feudal-serf system (pomeshchik latifundia and otrabotki); in the sociopolitical structure, in which autocracy was preserved; and in foreign and colonial policy, in which military-feudal imperialism, promoted by the tsarist government, existed alongside modern capitalist imperialism.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Russia “exhibited all the typical socioeconomic contradictions of the times: between labor and capital, between developing capitalism and substantial feudal-serf vestiges, and between highly developed industrial regions and backward peripheral areas. The tsarist autocracy’s system of political, moral, and national oppression imparted particular sharpness to these contradictions” (K 100-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia Vladimira Il’icha Lenina: Tezisy TsK KPSS, 1970, p. 7).
The early 20th century was a period of marked revolutionary and social upsurge. The center of the revolutionary movement shifted from Western Europe to Russia. The leading force in the revolutionary struggle was the Russian proletariat, which now “for the first time . . . stood as a class against all other classes and against the tsarist government” (Lenin, Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 9, p. 251). The revolutionary Social Democrats stood at the head of the proletariat. The circumstances listed above made the revolutionary crises of the early 20th century qualitatively different from previous revolutionary crises: a subjective factor was added to the objective signs of a revolutionary situation, namely, “the ability of the revolutionary class to take revolutionary mass action strong enough to break (or dislocate) the old government” (ibid., vol. 26, p. 219).
The conditions arose for the immediate transformation of the revolutionary situation into a revolution. The most important indications of the dynamics, broad scope, and nature of the class struggle of the Russian proletariat were the escalation from the economic strikes of the late 19th century to demonstrations against the government and to open confrontation with the police and troops; the evolution from strikes within enterprises to strikes and demonstrations that embraced a major industrial center and then to a strike and demonstration that gripped a huge economic region (1903); and the progression from purely economic demands to political demands, embodied in the slogan “Down with the autocracy! Long live the democratic republic!”
In 1901 striking workers at the Obukhov Factory in St. Petersburg fought back attacks by the police. During a May Day demonstration in Sormovo, the worker P. A. Zalomov raised a red banner. During a city-wide strike staged in Rostov-on-Don in November 1902, the first mass political meetings led by Social Democratic organizations were held. In the course of the general strike in southern Russia in 1903, the participants drew general conclusions from, combined, and further developed the procedures, forms, and methods of struggle that had been discovered earlier.
Under Lenin’s leadership, the revolutionary Marxists energetically set about working to create a new type of proletarian party. A major role in this effort was played by hkra (The Spark), a Marxist newspaper founded by Lenin, and by the illegal Russian organization of Iskra, which carried out all the preparations for the Second Congress of the RSDLP, held in July and August 1903. At the congress, a Marxist proletarian party of a new type was formed on the basis of ideological and organizational principles developed by Lenin. At the same time, serious differences surfaced, with the result that the party split into two wings: a majority (Bolsheviks), headed by Lenin, and a minority (Mensheviks), headed by L. Martov. Lenin wrote, “As a current of political thought and as a political party, Bolshevism has existed since 1903” (ibid., vol. 41, p. 6).
The Russian proletariat’s transition from economic to political struggle motivated other social groups and classes of Russian society to manifest actively their discontent. The students were in a state of unrest, and the Peasant Uprising of 1902 in Poltava and Kharkov provinces ushered in a new stage in the struggle of the peasant masses. A liberal opposition movement—the zemstvo movement—gathered momentum. As the revolutionary situation unfolded, the main classes of Russian society sought to define themselves politically by forming petit bourgeois parties and groups, the most important being the party of the Socialist Revolutionaries (SR’s; 1901–02). Liberal-bourgeois elements became consolidated in the Union of Zemstvo Constitutionalists (1903) and the Union of Liberation (1904), from which the bourgeois Constitutional Democrats, or Kadets (Cadets), evolved.
As the revolutionary struggle mounted, the tsarist government, in addition to imposing punitive measures, resorted to political maneuvering and promises of concessions. It attempted to steer the working-class movement along the path of trade unionism by establishing legal, progovernment workers’ organizations that operated under secret police supervision; this policy came to be known as Zubatovshchina.
Revolution of 1905–07. The fundamental contradiction inherent in the country’s socioeconomic and political structure defined the nature and driving forces of the first Russian revolution and its differences from the bourgeois revolutions of the 17th to 19th centuries. The principal force in these earlier revolutions was the bourgeoisie, which was fighting to establish a capitalist order; the proletarian and semiproletarian masses of the city and countryside, who lacked an independent program, simply followed the lead of the bourgeoisie.
A major scientific achievement of early 20th-century Marxism was Lenin’s conclusion that in the new, imperialist era and in an imperialist country, the driving forces of the bourgeois democratic revolution would be different: the proletariat, committed to the most radical victory of the bourgeois revolution, would emerge as the advance guard in the struggle for democracy. In the struggle to eliminate vestiges of serfdom, the proletariat would be supported by the democratic forces of the city and countryside, particularly the peasantry. Given the new alignment of contending forces, the bourgeoisie would limit itself to demanding concessions that left the economic system fundamentally unchanged (ibid., vol. 9, p. 133). In Russia, as opposed to the countries in which the earlier bourgeois revolutions had taken place, there were not two opposing camps—the government and antigovernment camps—but “three principal camps ... : the government camp, the liberals, and working-class democracy as the centre towards which all the forces of democracy in general gravitate” (ibid., vol. 21, p. 172).
The new alignment of driving forces determined another important feature of the first Russian revolution: although bourgeois democratic in its social content, it was proletarian in its means of struggle by virtue of the extraordinary role that strikes played in it. The mass strike movement, characterized by the intermeshing of economic and political strikes, was directly linked with the armed uprising. The revolutionary strike, which drew new worker detachments and broad nonproletarian masses into the struggle, reflected the popular character of the first Russian revolution. All the major events of the revolution were marked by the concerted action of the proletariat and the peasantry; although spontaneous and often unconscious, this alliance was of fundamental importance.
The popular nature of the revolution was also manifested in the definition of its main task: the seizure of power, which was to be exercised through a revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry. The organization of a new, higher form of the democratic state—a republic of soviets—essentially began in 1905, when soviets of workers’ deputies, soviets of soldiers’ deputies, and in rural localities peasant committees were established through the revolutionary creativity of the masses. The revolutionizing of the tsarist army and navy and the unification of progressive soldiers and sailors with the proletariat began in 1905. The Revolution of 1905–07, the first popular revolution of the imperialist era, ushered in a new worldwide revolutionary cycle. An important event in world history, it marked the beginning of a period of revolutionary clashes that led to the seizure of power by the proletariat in October 1917.
The revolution began on Jan. 9,1905. It passed through an ascendant stage that lasted through December 1905 and a descendant stage that ended with the coup d’etat of June 3, 1907. According to incomplete data, 2, 863,000 workers went on strike in Russia in 1905. The main events of the revolution’s initial stage were Bloody Sunday (Jan. 9, 1905), a strike in Ivanovo-Voznesensk, a rebellion in Łódź, an uprising on the battleship Potemkin, the October All-Russian Political Strike, and a mutiny at Sevastopol’.
In carrying out the revolution, the Russian proletariat was led by the Marxist party, under Lenin. The tactics of the Bolsheviks were defined in the resolutions of the Third Congress of the RSDLP and substantiated by Lenin in Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution (1905). In November and December 1905 the peasant movement enveloped 240 of the 500 districts of European Russia. The government’s response was to combine outright suppression of the revolutionary uprisings with attempts to draw the masses away from the struggle through promises of reform: for example, it created the Shidlovskii Commission, which was to investigate the causes of discontent among the workers of St. Petersburg, and drew up the Bulygin Duma plan for the convening of a representative body.
Lenin regarded the October general strike as a moment of temporary equilibrium among the contending forces, when the tsarist government was no longer able to put down the revolution but the revolution was still unable to crush the tsarist government (ibid., vol. 12, p. 28). Emperor Nicholas II (ruled 1894–1917) promulgated the Manifesto of Oct. 17, 1905, which contained a promise to convene a legislative body—the State Duma—without whose approval, it was stressed, no new law would go into effect. Two days later it was announced that the Council of Ministers was to become the highest government body and was to meet regularly; Witte was appointed its chairman. After the promulgation of the Manifesto of October 17 the liberal bourgeoisie began shifting to the side of counterrevolution. Bourgeois-pomeshchik parties were formed, the largest of which were the Constitutional Democrats, led by P. N. Miliukov, and the Union of October 17 (the Octobrists), led by A. I. Guchkov and M. V. Rodzianko.
The revolution reached its apogee with the December Armed Uprisings of 1905 in Moscow, Krasnoiarsk, Chita, Sormovo, Novorossiisk, and other cities and workers’ settlements.
The descendant stage of the revolution failed to match the previous stage in the intensity of the struggle, but it moved forward with a clearer demarcation of classes. In 1906, 1, 108,000 workers went on strike; in 1907, 740,000. In the spring of 1906 the peasant movement flared up again, approaching in its dynamism the upsurge of fall 1905. The revolutionary mood grew in the army and the navy, both of which experienced disturbances and uprisings: the Kronstadt uprisings of 1905 and 1906, the Sveaborg Uprising of 1906, and the uprising on the cruiser Pamiat’ Azova. Although the uprisings on the Baltic were suppressed, they held back the tide of reaction and indicated the extent to which the army had been revolutionized. The autocracy began suppressing the revolution outright through punitive expeditions and specially constituted military courts. By April 1906, 14,000 participants in the revolutionary movement had been executed, and 75,000 had been thrown into prison.
Under a law adopted on Dec. 11, 1905, elections to the State Duma took place through the landowner, municipal, and peasant curiae. Since high tsarist officials regarded the peasantry as a bulwark of the state and throne, the peasants were allowed to provide 43 percent of the deputies; their deputies demanded land. The government responded by declaring that pomeshchik land ownership was inviolable; it then dissolved the First State Duma, which sat from Apr. 7 to July 8, 1906. When the Second State Duma, which sat from Feb. 20 to June 2, 1907, turned out to be even more left-wing than its predecessor, the government dissolved it as well. At the same time, the rules governing elections to the Duma were changed. The tsarist government violated the clause in the Manifesto of October 17 stating that no law would go into effect without the approval of the State Duma.
The coup d’etat of June 3, 1907, signaled the defeat of the revolution. The Revolution of 1905–07 enlightened and organized the proletariat and its allies, revealed what could be expected from other classes and social groups, shook the autocratic structure, and paved the way for the ensuing class battles. Lenin wrote, “Without such a ’dress rehearsal’ as we had in 1905, the revolutions of 1917—both the bourgeois, February revolution, and the proletarian, October revolution—would have been impossible” (ibid., vol. 38, p. 306).
Socioeconomic development, 1907–13. The stage of industrial development that began in the Russian economy in 1909 proved to be no less intense than the upsurge of the 1890’s: industrial output grew at an average annual rate of 8.9 percent between 1909 and 1913, as compared with 9 percent between 1893 and
Table 2a. Comparison of Russia by size with other capitalist countries (1913)	Table 2a. Comparison of Russia by size with other capitalist countries (1913)	Table 2a. Comparison of Russia by size with other capitalist countries (1913)	Table 2a. Comparison of Russia by size with other capitalist countries (1913)	Table 2a. Comparison of Russia by size with other capitalist countries (1913)	Table 2a. Comparison of Russia by size with other capitalist countries (1913)
 	Area (million sq km) 	Population (millions) 	Population density (persons per sq km) 	Length of railroad system 	Length of railroad system
 	Area (million sq km) 	Population (millions) 	Population density (persons per sq km) 	(thousand km) 	(km, per 10,000 population)
United States ............... 	7.84 	96.5 	12.3 	401.9 	41.60
Germany ............... 	0.54 	66.9 	123.8 	63.4 	9.50
Great Britain ............... 	0.31 	45.9 	146.5 	38.1 	8.30
Austria-Hungary ............... 	0.62 	50.5 	81.4 	44.7 	8.80
France ............... 	0.54 	39.8 	74.2 	40.8 	10.30
Russia ............... 	22.00 	169.4 	7.7 	 	
European Russia ............... 	5.55 	136.2 	25.1 	71.7 	4.25
Italy ............... 	0.29 	35.6 	122.8 	17.6 	5.00
Spain ............... 	0.50 	20.3 	40.6 	14.4 	7.10
Japan ............... 	0.39 	55.1 	142.1 	11.4 	2.00
India ............... 	4.49 	316.0 	70.4 	53.9 	1.70
1900. Industries that turned out producer goods increased their output by 83 percent and registered an average annual growth rate of 13 percent; the figures for industries that produced consumer goods were 35 percent and 6 percent, respectively. As before, large-scale capitalist industry was concentrated in six regions—the central industrial, northwestern (St. Petersburg), Baltic, southern, Polish, and Ural regions; in 1911 they accounted for more than 75 percent of gross output and about 79 percent of all factory and mill workers. The remaining territories were at a low level of industrial development.
On the eve of World War I, Russia had 255 metallurgical plants, the largest of which were 27 plants in the south; the coal industry was represented by some 568 enterprises, the petroleum industry by 170 extracting and 54 refining enterprises, and the metalworking industry, as of 1911, by 1,800 plants of various sizes. In 1913 the cotton industry had 840 mills with a total of more than 210,000 looms and 9 million spindles, and electric power stations had a total capacity of 1,098,000 kilowatts (kW). Along with large enterprises, of which there were 29,400 in manufacturing and mining, Russia had some 150,000 small enterprises of two to 15 workers; such enterprises employed a total of about 800,000 workers and produced output worth 700 million rubles. “Independent” artisans numbered about 600,000. About 4 million rural craftsmen and artisans produced industrial output for three to five months annually.
Between 1890 and 1913 the output of heavy industry increased sevenfold, and its relative share of large-scale capitalist production reached 43 percent, as compared with 26 percent at the end of the 19th century. Light industry also grew rapidly: the amount of cotton that was processed increased sevenfold, and sugar production quadrupled.
Table 2b. Comparison of Russia by selected industries with other capitalist countries (1913)	Table 2b. Comparison of Russia by selected industries with other capitalist countries (1913)	Table 2b. Comparison of Russia by selected industries with other capitalist countries (1913)	Table 2b. Comparison of Russia by selected industries with other capitalist countries (1913)	Table 2b. Comparison of Russia by selected industries with other capitalist countries (1913)	Table 2b. Comparison of Russia by selected industries with other capitalist countries (1913)	Table 2b. Comparison of Russia by selected industries with other capitalist countries (1913)
 	Coal mining 	Coal mining 	Pig-iron production 	Pig-iron production 	Steel production 	Steel production
 	million tons 	tons per capita 	million tons 	kg per capita 	million tons 	kg per capita
United States ............... 	517.00 	5.35 	31.46 	326.00 	31.80 	329.0
Germany ............... 	277.34 	4.15 	16.76 	250.50 	17.15 	256.0
Great Britain ............... 	292.00 	6.36 	10.42 	227.00 	7.79 	170.0
Austria-Hungary ............... 	17.80 	0.35 	2.37 	46.90 	2.68 	53.0
France ............... 	40.80 	1.02 	5.21 	130.90 	4.69 	118.0
Russia ............... 	35.90 	0.21 	4.64 	27.40 	4.25 	25.1
European Russia ............... 	33.28 	0.24 	4.64 	34.40 	4.25 	31.4
Italy ............... 	1.00 	0.03 	0.43 	12.00 	0.93 	26.1
Spain ............... 	4.00 	0.20 	0.42 	20.70 	0.24 	11.8
Japan ............... 	21.30 	0.39 	0.24 	4.35 	0.25 	4.5
India ............... 	16.40 	0.05 	0.20 	0.60 	0.06 	0.2
On the whole, however, Russian industry lagged behind that of the highly industrialized countries in technological sophistication.
On the eve of World War I, Russia stood at a middle level of capitalist development: it ranked fifth in the world and fourth in Europe in industrial production (see Tables 2a-2d).
The amount of freight carried by rail increased, and the railroad network was expanded. The Orenburg-Tashkent railroad provided an outlet for cotton from Middle Asia and brought about a marked upturn in Central Russia’s trade with Kazakhstan and Middle Asia. The construction of a railroad line from the Amur to Khabarovsk began on the eve of the war; the line, which linked the Trans-Siberian Railroad with Vladivostok, was completed in 1916. The total length of the railroad system reached 71,900 km in 1913, of which 43,700 km was state owned. Despite its growth, the system did not meet the national economy’s need for railroad transportation. A considerable amount of freight was hauled by animal-drawn transport, even though Russia had few highways and paved roads. The river fleet of 31,000 vessels, including 5,556 steamboats, played a major role. The world’s first motor ship for river transport was built at the Kolomna Plant in 1907. By the outbreak of the war, 70 of the world’s 80 motor ships belonged to Russia.
Table 2c. Comparison of Russia in machine building with other capitalist countries (1913)	Table 2c. Comparison of Russia in machine building with other capitalist countries (1913)	Table 2c. Comparison of Russia in machine building with other capitalist countries (1913)	Table 2c. Comparison of Russia in machine building with other capitalist countries (1913)	Table 2c. Comparison of Russia in machine building with other capitalist countries (1913)
 	Machine-building output 	Machine-building output 	Spindles in cotton industry 	Spindles in cotton industry
 	million rubles 	rubles per capita 	thousands 	number per thousand population
United States ............... 	3,116.5 	32.30 	31,505 	326.5
Germany ............... 	1,288.0 	19.20 	11,186 	167.2
Great Britain ............... 	736.0 	16.00 	55,652 	1,212.4
Austria-Hungary ............... 	211.6 	4.20 	4,909 	97.2
France ............... 	120.9 	3.00 	7,400 	185.9
Russia ............... 	218.5 	1.40 	6,758 	39.9
European Russia ............... 	216.0 	1.60 	6,736 	49.5
Italy ............... 	80.5 	2.30 	4,600 	129.2
Spain ............... 	— 	— 	2,000 	98.5
Japan ............... 	21.6 	0.39 	2,300 	41.7
India ............... 	— 	— 	6,084 	19.3
Between 1908 and 1913 the number of banks and bank branches doubled, reaching a total of 2,393. The total assets of all commercial banks grew by 250 percent, reaching a sum of about 7 billion rubles. The main institutions of the credit system were the State Bank, which was the country’s central bank of issue, and the joint-stock commercial banks; by 1914, 70 percent of all deposits and current accounts were concentrated in these institutions. The five largest banks in St. Petersburg accounted for nearly half the total assets and active operations of all Russian joint-stock commercial banks. The petroleum trusts, metallurgical and coal syndicates, and transportation machine-building syndicates became stronger. Associations resembling concerns were formed in the metalworking industry: the military-industrial group of the Russian-Asiatic Bank, the Kolomna-Sormovo group, and the Naval-Russud trust. The Russian-Asiatic Bank and the St. Petersburg International Commercial Bank played a leading role in the large banking monopolies that emerged. Monopoly capitalism turned into a system that dominated the economy of the Russian Empire.
Table 2d. Comparison of Russia’s foreign trade turnover with that of other capitalist countries (1913)	Table 2d. Comparison of Russia’s foreign trade turnover with that of other capitalist countries (1913)	Table 2d. Comparison of Russia’s foreign trade turnover with that of other capitalist countries (1913)
 	Million rubles 	Rubles per capita
United States ............... 	8,204 	85
Germany ............... 	9,664 	144
Great Britain ............... 	11,244 	245
Austria-Hungary ............... 	— 	—
France ............... 	5,740 	144
Russia ............... 	2,894 	17
European Russia ............... 	2,894 	21
Italy ............... 	2308 	65
Spain ............... 	887 	44
Japan ............... 	1,312 	24
India ............... 	4,020 	13
From 1900 to 1914, Russian agriculture developed along the capitalist path, primarily under the influence of a rise in prices for agricultural commodities on the world and domestic markets. In 1909 the gross yield of grain amounted to 4.72 billion poods, an increase of 1 billion poods over the preceding year. The volume of grain commodities exported in 1909 was nearly twice the figure for 1908. The value of Russian exports totaled 1,427, 700,000 rubles in 1909. Grain exports reached 849 million poods in 1910, a record level.
Between 1906 and 1916 private owners sold to the Bank of the Peasantry alone, and to the peasants through the bank, 9.5 million desiatinas of land, or one-tenth of the privately held land. The largest latifundia, which as a rule were preserved, were centers for the concentration of capital in land cultivation and were the main perpetrators of the semiserf exploitation of the local peasantry. Between 1906 and 1914 about 8.8 million desiatinas were mortgaged and remortgaged to the Bank of the Nobility. Between 1907 and 1913 total pomeshchik revenues from the sale, mortgage, and lease of land reached approximately 3.3 billion rubles. On the eve of the war, 600 million poods, or 12 percent, of the grain harvest of 5 billion poods was produced on pomeshchik farms. The market output of such farms, however, was high, accounting for 47 percent of their gross yield of grain.
The capitalist development of peasant farming was accelerated by the Stolypin agrarian reform. The disintegration of the peasantry into a rural bourgeoisie and a proletariat proceeded more rapidly. The material and technical basis for agriculture became stronger: the value of agricultural machinery and implements in use rose from 163 million rubles in 1906 to 408 million in 1913. The total sown area in 62 provinces, excluding Transcaucasia. Turkestan, and the Far East, increased from 81.2 million desiatinas in 1901 to 138 million in 1913. Middle Asia became the principal supplier of cotton. Between 1907 and 1914 cotton plantings increased from 342,000 desiatinas to 508,000, and the yield of seed cotton rose from 18 million poods to 29 million. Middle Asia’s share of the cotton supplied to Russia’s textile industry rose from 32.6 percent in 1900 to 55 percent in 1913. Rye yields increased from 63 poods per desiatina to 70 on pomeshchik fields and from 53 poods per desiatina to 59 on peasant fields. Exports of agricultural commodities increased in monetary terms from 701 million rubles in 1901–05 to 1.126 billion in 1911–13.
Agriculture remained extremely backward, however: the average harvest of wheat per desiatina was 55 poods in Russia, as compared with 157 in Germany and 168 in Belgium. Russia’s colonial system was unusual in that the colonies bordered the mother country and together with it constituted a single state formation; in addition, capitalist and military-feudal methods of exploiting both the indigenous population and the settlers were combined. These distinctive features shaped the common histories of the two main population groups in the colonial territories—the settlers and the indigenous population—and brought the anticolonial national liberation movement into the nationwide Russian struggle against tsarism and imperialism.
Between 1897 and 1913, the population of Russia increased by one-third, to 169.4 million. As before, the bulk of the population lived in European Russia. The social structure of the population reflected the nature of the Russian economy, in which agriculture prevailed over industry: the rural population was much larger than the urban population. The cities played a major role, and the urban proletariat accounted for a steadily increasing percentage of the total population (see Table 3). On the eve of World War I, the total number of wage laborers exceeded 15 million, including 4 million manufacturing and railroad workers. In 1914, 56.6 percent of all workers were found in industrial enterprises with 500 or more workers, a circumstance that made it easier to organize the proletariat politically.
Table 3. Class composition of the population of Russia1 	Table 3. Class composition of the population of Russia1	Table 3. Class composition of the population of Russia1	Table 3. Class composition of the population of Russia1	Table 3. Class composition of the population of Russia1	Table 3. Class composition of the population of Russia1
 	Total population, both sexes (millions) 	Total population, both sexes (millions) 	Proportion of all social groups (percent) 	Proportion of all social groups (percent) 	Increase from 1897 to 1913 (percent)
 	1897 	1913 	1897 	1913 	Increase from 1897 to 1913 (percent)
1 Excluding Finland 	1 Excluding Finland 	1 Excluding Finland 	1 Excluding Finland 	1 Excluding Finland 	1 Excluding Finland
Big bourgeoisie, pomeshchiki, high officials, and others ...............	3. 0 	4.1 	2.4 	2.5 	36.7
Prosperous small proprietors ............... 	23. 1 	31.5 	18.4 	19.0 	36.4
Total ............... 	26.1 	35.6 	20.8 	21.5 	36.4
Poorest small proprietors ............... 	35. 8 	42.0 	28.5 	25.3 	17.3
Semiproletarians ............... 	41.7 	55.6 	33.2 	33.6 	33.3
Proletarians ............... 	22.0 	32.5 	17.5 	19.6 	47.7
Total ............... 	63.7 	88.1 	50.7 	53.2 	38.3
Grand total ............... 	125.6 	165.7 	100.0 	100.0 	31.9
Russia was a country of sharp contrasts. Large-scale industry coexisted with handicrafts and cottage industry. The elements of a developed monopoly capitalism were combined with and interacted with vestiges of the feudal and, in some cases, clan systems. There were large developing industrial and cultural centers, but the country as a whole was economically and culturally backward. Production and the proletariat were more concentrated in Russia than in many developed countries; on the other hand, in the countryside the way of life and methods of past centuries were retained, and the remote borderlands inhabited by non-Russian nationalities were at the same level of development as colonial and semicolonial regions elsewhere in the world. All the contradictions of the imperialist era were revealed in the interaction and conflict among the various socioeconomic systems in Russia.
Reaction and new revolutionary upsurge. After the revolution had been suppressed, the tsarist government’s treatment of the working class and its party exhibited a marked animus. More than 600 trade unions were dissolved, and about 1,000 newspapers and journals shut down, between 1906 and 1912. Leading figures in the Bolshevik organizations were imprisoned, sentenced to internal exile, or forced into emigration. The Constitutional Democrats adopted an openly counterrevolutionary position. In the anthology Vekhi (Landmarks), published in 1909, a group of philosophers and publicists criticized the Marxist doctrine of class struggle and ridiculed the revolutionary intelligentsia’s espousal of “love for one’s fellow man” and “love for the people”; in addition, the group attempted to make the intelligentsia feel worthless and cut off from the people and called for a rejection of materialism and atheism.
Seeking to avert a new revolution, the autocracy made an effort to complete, by counterrevolutionary means, the tasks that had been put forth by the revolution. The tsarist government undertook a reform of the agrarian system in the hope of creating a conservative class of capitalist landowners in the countryside. As a result of the Stolypin agrarian reform, about 2 million heads of peasant households, or one-fourth of all households belonging to peasant communes, left the peasant communes between 1906 and 1915. The class of capitalist landowners that was supposed to act as a barrier to revolution never materialized, however. The famine of the winter of 1911–12, which affected more than 30 million peasants, testified to the failure of the Stolypin policy. The reform did not bring about a conclusive victory of Prussian-style capitalism in Russian agriculture. The peasant question had not been defused. Two tendencies, two paths of agrarian-capitalist evolution—the bourgeois-conservative path and that of the independent farmer—were present throughout the country, but neither triumphed decisively. The reform therefore did not eliminate the conditions for the development of the agrarian-peasant revolution.
The industrial upsurge made possible a transition to offensive strikes, which were staged by the workers of Moscow and Moscow Province as early as the summer of 1910. Student strikes swept over the country in January 1911. In 1911 the number of strikers reached 105,000—more than twice as many as in 1910.
After the Lena Massacre of Apr. 4, 1912, the strike movement enveloped the entire country. About 300,000 proletarians in every corner of the Russian Empire took part in protests, which spilled over into May Day demonstrations and strikes. On May 1, 1912, alone, more than 1,000 strikes took place in 50 provinces of Russia. In the fall of 1912 the death sentence handed down against 17 sailors of the Black Sea Fleet who were charged with preparing an armed uprising touched off strikes, demonstrations, and protest meetings involving more than 250,000 workers. The driving force in the revolutionary upsurge was the Russian proletariat, and the chief form of struggle was the mass revolutionary strike. According to official data, in 1912 the total number of strikers exceeded 725,000, of whom 550,000 took part in political strikes. In 1913 the number of political strikers declined somewhat, to 502,000, but the total number of strikers rose to 887,000; in 1914 the total number of strikers was 1,338,000, of whom 986,000 were political strikers. In the unfolding struggle of the proletariat, Bolshevik influence was paramount. The Bolshevik party, although forced underground, made every possible use of legal opportunities and organizations, the most important of which were the legal national press (the first issue of the newspaper Pravda came out on Apr. 22 [May 5], 1912) and the independent fraction in the Fourth State Duma. The party’s success in raising the movement to a new level accounts for the high degree of organization of the struggle and the diversity of forms that it assumed.
The revolutionary activism of soldiers and sailors increased. In June 1913 there was a protest strike of 100,000 persons against the impending execution of 52 sailors of the Black Sea Fleet charged with planning an uprising. The government was forced to rescind the death penalty. When 50,000 workers in Baku struck in May and July 1914, the proletarians of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kolomna, Kharkov, Kiev, and Rostov staged a sympathy strike. In St. Petersburg 90,000 persons struck on July 4, and 150,000 on July 8. Clashes with the police erupted, and barricades were set up. By the summer of 1914 the strike movement had become broader in scope than the movement of 1905. Only the world war halted the revolutionary momentum.
The cultural development of imperialist Russia was influenced in large part by the revolutionary struggle of the popular masses; it proceeded as the government pursued a policy characterized by the Black Hundreds and by pogroms and as Russian society became more clearly stratified. In education the government stepped up its repression of students and progressive professors. As a result of the country’s growing needs and under pressure from progressive public opinion, however, the number of primary and secondary schools and the number of their students nearly doubled between the 1890’s and 1913. By 1913 the number of university students had reached 127,000. Nonetheless, the majority of the population of the Russian Empire remained illiterate.
The natural sciences developed at a particularly rapid rate at the junctures of established disciplines. In the social sciences Marxism gained in influence, and the struggle against bourgeois liberalism intensified. The Marxist trend took on a prominent role in science and scholarship. The Leninist period in the development of Marxist thought began in the mid-1890’s. A scientific basis for the philosophic, economic, and social sciences of the modern era was provided by Lenin’s The Development of Capitalism in Russia, his Materialism and Empiriocriticism, and his Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism.
Notable contributions to the literature and art of critical realism were made by A. P. Chekhov, I. A. Bunin, V. G. Korolenko, A. I. Kuprin, V. A. Serov, K. A. Korovin, and M. M. Antokol’skii. At the turn of the 20th century there emerged a revolutionary-romantic orientation founded on realism; its main exemplars were A. A. Blok, M. A. Vrubel’, N. K. Rerikh (Roerich), and A. N. Scriabin. After 1905 the foundations of socialist realism were laid, principally by M. Gorky. The Moscow Art Theater constituted an entire era in theater arts. The distinctive features of the realistic school of Russian vocal art were presented most strikingly by F. I. Chaliapin, A. V. Nezhdanova, and L. V. Sobinov.
Although realism was predominant, it was not the only trend in the literature and art of capitalist Russia. At the turn of the 20th century, and especially after the defeat of the Russian revolution, there emerged a literature and art of decadence, characterized by worship of individualism, deification of the self, aestheticism, and refusal to deal with social subject matter. The epidemic of decadence proved to be short-lived in Russia, however. Progressive currents, trends, and aspirations clearly predominated in all areas of Russian culture, in which democratic and bourgeois culture coexisted and competed. The powerful democratic revolutionary spirit facilitated the emergence and development of a new, socialist culture that was heir to the best in the culture of prerevolutionary Russia.
World War I. In the period immediately before the outbreak of World War I, Anglo-German conflicts dominated the world stage. The tsarist government had become markedly weaker as a result of its defeat in the Russo-Japanese War and the Revolution of 1905–07. As Russia’s relations with Germany and Austria-Hungary deteriorated, its relations with France improved; in 1906, France granted a loan of some 850 million rubles to the tsarist government. Relations were also cultivated with Japan and Great Britain. In July 1907, Russia signed with Japan a commercial treaty, a fishing convention, and an agreement under which northern Manchuria and Outer Mongolia became a Russian sphere of influence and southern Manchuria and Korea became a Japanese sphere of influence. In October 1912 a Russo-Mongolian treaty was signed recognizing the autonomy of Outer Mongolia.
In August 1907, Great Britain and Russia signed a convention on Iran, Afghanistan, and Tibet. Iran was divided into three zones: a northern zone, which became a Russian sphere of influence; a southeastern zone, which became a British sphere of influence; and an intermediate zone, which was declared neutral. Afghanistan was declared part of Great Britain’s sphere of influence. Russia and Great Britain pledged not to violate the territorial integrity of Tibet and promised to communicate with the Tibetan authorities only through the Chinese government. Objectively, the agreements with Great Britain and Japan were a stage in the formation of an anti-German coalition: “[Great Britain and Russia] divide Persia, Afghanistan, Tibet (preparing for war against Germany)” (ibid., vol. 28, p. 669).
In World War I, which was begun by Germany, Russia formed part of the Entente, which opposed the German bloc. The other members of the Entente were Great Britain, France, Italy (from 1915), and the USA (from 1917). The war, a result of the profound contradictions that characterized the imperialist era, was an aggressive and unjust war on both sides. Both sides sought to redivide the world in order to expand their territories and acquire new markets. More than 20 states were drawn into the war. The imperialist aspirations of the tsarist government were directed toward the south and southwest—toward Iran, Turkey, Galicia, and the Black Sea straits—where Russia’s immediate foe was Austria-Hungary. Russia’s commitments to France, however, precluded passive defensive operations along the German Front, since such operations might lead to a French defeat. It was decided that about one-third of the Russian forces would be used for an offensive against Germany in East Prussia and more than half for an offensive against Austria-Hungary in Galicia.
The main battles in the Russian (Eastern) theater of operations took place in the northwestern and southwestern sectors, against Germany and Austria-Hungary, respectively. The Russian Army’s invasion of East Prussia in August and early September ended in failure, but it substantially influenced operations on the Western Front: the German command was forced to transfer large numbers of troops to the east, a move that was a major factor in the failure of the German offensive against Paris. The battle of Galicia in August and September 1914 was an important military, strategic, and political victory for Russia: the Russian Army advanced 230–300 km, seizing Galicia and its main city, Lwów (present-day L’vov). During fighting in Poland in October and November 1914, the Germany Army frustrated Russian attempts to drive deep into Germany but was unable to inflict a serious defeat. On the Caucasian Front, the Sankamiş Operation in December 1914 and January 1915 led to a major defeat for the Turkish Army.
The German Army began its offensive in April 1915 by breaking through the Russian defense at Görlitz. The Russian Army had to absorb the main attacks of the enemy. Russia suffered a series of defeats in 1915. By fall the German Army had occupied much of Galicia, all of Poland, and part of the Baltic region and Byelorussia. In May 1916, however, A. A. Brusilov led the troops of the Southwestern Front in a major offensive. By mid-August the Austro-Hungarian troops had fallen back to the Carpathian passes, having abandoned completely all of Bucovina and southern Galicia and having suffered heavy losses of weapons and men: the Russian Army took more than 400,000 prisoners. The German command was forced to remove 11 divisions from the Western Front and six divisions from Italy, all of which were sent to relieve the Austrians. Russia also won victories on the Caucasian Front; by taking Erzurum in February, Trebizond in April, and Erzincan in July, the Russian Army penetrated 250–300 km into Turkish territory. By late December the Germans had occupied Rumania, which had entered the war on the side of the Entente; the Russian Front was extended by nearly 500 km, thereby tying down large numbers of enemy forces.
A severe shortage of guns and ammunition and a lack of support from the Allies lowered the combat-readiness of the Russian Army and increased casualties severalfold. Russia’s losses were substantially higher than those of the Allies: for every 1,000 men, the British Army lost six. the French Army 59, and the Russian Army 85.
The defeats of the spring and summer of 1915 presented the ruling classes of the country with the problem of restructuring the entire economy on a military footing. In 1915 special conferences to deal with various matters of the military economy were instituted, and war industries committees were established. A system of state-monopolistic regulation of the economy took shape. Some progress was made toward increasing domestic production of guns, cartridges, and artillery shells, but the shortage of weapons remained acute for the army in the field. Orders placed abroad for war matériel, raw materials, and equipment increased Russia’s foreign debt by 7 billion rubles; by 1917, the foreign debt stood at 11.3 billion rubles. The transportation system could not cope with shipments, and metal, fuel, and raw materials were in short supply. Agriculture was in dire straits, since as many as half of the men able to work had gone to the front. The cities began experiencing difficulties with regard to food supplies.
The war revealed the decay in Russia’s socioeconomic structure and exacerbated class contradictions. At the same time, it accelerated the development of capitalism and the creation of the material preconditions for a socialist revolution. This fact was reflected in the rapid rate at which production became concentrated, in the development of capitalist monopolies (852 joint-stock enterprises were formed between September 1915 and February 1917), and in the transformation of monopoly capitalism into state-monopoly capitalism.
During World War I the main parties of the Second International betrayed the proletariat and, rallying to the “defense of the fatherland,” concluded alliances with the bourgeoisie of their respective countries. The Russian petit bourgeois parties—the Mensheviks and SR’s—followed suit. Only the Leninist Bolsheviks showed themselves to be consistent internationalist revolutionaries. The Leninist position on tactics was expressed most succinctly in the thesis that the imperialist war must be transformed into a civil war. During the war years, Lenin further developed the theory of proletarian revolution. Studying the laws of development of capitalism in its highest, imperialist stage, he concluded that it was possible for the proletarian revolution to triumph initially in a single country. This discovery spurred on the proletariat in each of the capitalist countries—above all, the proletariat of Russia, the vanguard of the international revolutionary movement. The Leninist party, in its consistent defense of the interests of the toiling masses, and with its knowledge of the goals, means, and prospects of the struggle, was in essence the sole leader of the revolutionary offensive.
The fighting ability and morale of the troops were undermined by heavy losses at the front, an acute shortage of weapons, and the economic chaos and revolutionary crisis in Russia. In 1915 and 1916, 2 million soldiers surrendered, and 1.5 million deserted. The Bolsheviks waged a struggle to revolutionize the army. In late 1916, Bolshevik military organizations were active in the army and in the cities with the largest military garrisons. In 1916 a mass movement against the war and the autocracy spread throughout the army.
Mounting discontent with the war and with tsarism gripped the toiling masses. In October 1916, 250,000 workers struck in Petrograd alone; there were mass meetings against rising prices, the war, and the autocracy. The actions of the Petrograd workers were supported by antiwar political strikes in Moscow. Economic strikes were staged at enterprises in Tver’, Moscow, and Kostroma provinces, the Oblast of the Don Host, and the Urals. Some 294 peasant uprisings were recorded in 1916, which also witnessed the Middle Asian Uprising.
The ruling circles experienced an acute crisis. Ministers were shuffled: during the war there were four different chairmen of the Council of Ministers, six ministers of the interior, and four ministers of war. The tsarist court became a haven for adventurers and rascals, notably G. E. Rasputin. The bourgeois opposition gained strength and entered into conflict with the tsarist government. A revolutionary situation developed in Russia in the fall of 1916. The imperialist countries, in initiating the war, had counted on doing away with the contradictions that had been at the root of the war and strengthening the capitalist order; the war, contrary to their expectations, brought on the general crisis of capitalism. Lenin’s prediction, made at the outset of hostilities, came true: “Imperialist war is the eve of socialist revolution” (ibid., vol. 34, p. 193).
February Bourgeois Democratic Revolution of 1917. The year 1917 began with a wave of strikes the like of which had not been seen since the first Russian revolution: in January of that year 270,000 workers went out on strike. A new popular revolution was brewing in Russia. In February many enterprises were again hit by strikes. On February 23 (March 8), 128,000 workers were out on strike, a number that increased to 200,000 the next day. A general political strike by the workers of Petrograd began on February 25 (March 10). Military units began siding with the workers. By the evening of February 27 (March 12) more than 66,000 soldiers had gone over to the revolutionary workers. The Russian Bureau of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party published the manifesto “To All Citizens of Russia,” which called for the establishment of a democratic republic, the introduction of an eight-hour workday, the confiscation of pomeshchik lands, and the immediate termination of the imperialist war. The insurgent workers and soldiers disarmed the police and gendarmes, arrested the tsarist ministers, and freed political prisoners.
The capital was in the hands of workers and the soldiers of the Petrograd garrison. In response to the appeal of the Bolsheviks, elections to a soviet of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies were held. The first session of the Petrograd soviet was held on the evening of February 27. Supported by the armed people, the soviet began carrying out revolutionary measures; for example, it created a militia and issued Order No. 1, which democratized the army. On March 2 (15), Nicholas II abdicated in favor of his brother Mikhail, who in turn renounced the throne on March 3 (16).
Real power was in the hands of the Petrograd soviet, in which, however, representatives of the petit bourgeois parties—the SR’s and Mensheviks—held a majority. The reason for this state of affairs was the working class’s lack of political maturity and organization and the unprecedented activism of the petit bourgeois strata of the population, which constituted an absolute majority in the country. Taking advantage of the surge of petit bourgeois activity, the Mensheviks and SR’s gained the leadership of most of the country’s soviets. The SR-Menshevik leadership of the Petrograd soviet, recognizing that the bourgeois democratic revolution had been accomplished and believing that Russia was not ripe for a socialist revolution, decided to grant the bourgeois parties the right to form a government. The bourgeois Provisional Government was formed on March 2 (15), with Prince G. E. L’vov as its chairman.
A dual system of power emerged: the regime of the bourgeoisie—the Provisional Government—and the bodies of the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry—the soviets of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies. The Provisional Government could hold onto power only with the support of the SR-Menshevik soviets, since it did not control the forces necessary to suppress the revolution. As a result, it became possible for the socialist revolution to achieve victory through peaceful means: the bourgeois government could not oppose the soviets in the event that the latter proclaimed soviet power. Dual power reflected the transitional state of the revolution. Characterizing the February Revolution, Lenin wrote that it “[had] gone farther than the ordinary bourgeois democratic revolution, but [had] not yet reached a ’pure’ dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry” (ibid., vol. 31, p. 155). Dual power could not last for long: it contained irreconcilable contradictions that had to be resolved through the establishment of a dictatorship—a dictatorship either of the soviets or of the Provisional Government.
From its inception the Provisional Government attempted to eliminate dual power and establish a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and pomeshchiki; it maneuvered between sides, disguised its real intentions, and deceived the people. In Lenin’s words, the Provisional Government, “seeking to gain time, [resorted to] delays and subterfuges.” It was concerned with “thwarting the revolution as cautiously and quietly as possible, and promising everything without fulfilling any of its promises” (ibid., vol. 34, p. 61).
The Provisional Government left intact the entire civil service, except for the governors, whom it replaced with its own commissars. Tsarist legislation was preserved, and the procurators, judges, and investigators remaining from the previous regime were not replaced. Titles were not abolished. The nobility, bourgeoisie, clergy, and merchants retained their wealth, rights, and privileges. Supported by the Entente, Russia’s Provisional Government continued the imperialist war. It did not promulgate a single law in the interests of the working class; it did not even legislate the eight-hour workday, which was implemented only through resolutions of the soviets or without prior arrangement. The government, which likewise had no intention of resolving the agrarian question, dispatched punitive detachments to suppress peasant disturbances.
The Provisional Government adhered to the tsarist policy of “one Russia indivisible”; it was incapable of resolving the national question, although it restored Finland’s autonomy on March 7 (20) and published a declaration on March 17 (30) that referred to the creation of an “independent Poland” in the future. On March 20 (April 2) it promulgated the decree On Abolishing Religious and National Restrictions, which did not, however, resolve the key question for the non-Russian peoples of the Russian Empire: the guaranteed right of self-determination.
After the February Revolution, a broad national liberation movement developed in the outlying regions inhabited by non-Russian nationalities; in these areas the movement was initially controlled by a local nationalist bourgeoisie. Bourgeois nationalist organizations were formed: the Central Rada in the Ukraine (March), the Byelorussian Rada (July), the national councils in the Baltic region, Shura-i-Islam (Council of Islamists) and Shura-i-Ulema (Council of the Clergy) in Turkestan, and Alash in Kazakhstan. The bourgeois nationalist parties Dashnaktsutiun (Union) in Armenia and Musavat (Equality) in Azerbaijan became active.
Supported by the conciliationist petit bourgeois parties, the Provisional Government carried out an antipopular policy and stood guard over the interests of the Russian imperialist bourgeoisie and the pomeshchiki. The revolution in Russia could not halt at the bourgeois democratic stage: its development into a socialist revolution was inevitable.
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Socioeconomic development and class struggle
Peasant reform
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Working-class movement and first Social Democratic organizations
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V nachale puti. Leningrad, 1975.Gerasimov, V. G. Zhizn’ russkogo rabochego: Vospominaniia. Moscow, 1959.Moiseenko, P. A. Vospominaniia starogo revoliutsionera. Moscow, 1966.
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Government structure and domestic policy
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Valuev, P. A. Dnevnik, vols. 1–2. Moscow, 1961.Koni, A. F. Sobr. soch., vols. 1–2. Moscow, 1966.Miliutin, D. A. Dnevnik, vols. 1–4. Moscow, 1947–50.Nikitenko, A. V. Dnevnik, vols. 1–3. Moscow, 1955–56.Pobedonostsev, K. P. Pis’ma k Aleksandru III, vols. 1–2. Moscow, 1925–26.
K. P. Pobedonostsev i ego korrespondenty: Pis’ma i zapiski, vol. 1, parts 1–2. Moscow, 1923.Polovtsov, A. A. Dnevnik gosudarstvennogo sekretaria, vols. 1–2. Moscow, 1966.Suvorin, A. S. Dnevnik. Moscow-Petrograd, 1923.
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Baluev, B. P. Politicheskaia reaktsiia 80-kh gg. XIX v. i russkaia zhurnalistika. Moscow, 1971.Vilenskii, B. V. Sudebnaia reforma i kontrreforma v Rossii. Saratov, 1969.Garmiza, V. V. Podgotovka zemskoi reformy 1864 g. Moscow, 1957.Gessen, I. V. Sudebnaia reforma. St. Petersburg, 1905.Zaionchkovskii, P. A. Voennye reformy 1860–1870 godov v Rossii. Moscow, 1952.Zaionchkovskii, P. A. Krizis samoderzhaviia na rubezhe 1870–80-kh gg. [Moscow] 1964.Zaionchkovskii, P. A. Rossiiskoe samoderzhavie v kontse XIX st. Moscow, 1970.Zaionchkovskii, P. A. Samoderzhavie i russkaia armiia na rubezhe XIX–XXst., 1881–1903. Moscow, 1973.Zakharova, L. G. Zemskaia kontrreforma 1890 g. Moscow, 1968.Lemke, M. K. Epokha tsenzurnykh reform 1859–1865 gg. St. Petersburg, 1904.Solov’ev, lu. B. Samoderzhavie i dvorianstvo v kontse XIX v. Leningrad, 1973.Filippov, M. A. Sudebnaia reforma v Rossii, vols. 1–2. St. Petersburg, 1871–75.Kheifets, M. I. Vtoraia revoliutsionnaia situatsiia v Rossii (konets 70-kh–nachalo 80-kh gg. XIX v.). Moscow, 1963.Shchetinina, G. I. Universitety v Rossii i Ustav 1884 g. Moscow, 1976.
Sociopolitical thought and the revolutionary movement
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K. Marks, F. Engel’s i revoliutsionnaia Rossiia. Moscow, 1967.
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Revolutionary situation of 1859–61
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E. N. Vodovozova. Na zare zhizni, vols. 1–2. Moscow, 1964.Panteleev, L. F. Vospominaniia. Moscow, 1958.Shelgunov, N. V., L. P. Shelgunova, and M. L. Mikhailov. Vospominaniia, vols. 1–2. Moscow, 1967.
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Populism
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Aptekman, O. V. Obshchestvo “Zemlia i volia” 70-kh gg., 2nd ed. Petrograd, 1924.Debagorii-Mokrievich, V. K. Ot buntarstva k terrorizmu, books 1–2. Moscow-Leningrad, 1930.Kropotkin, P. A. Zapiski revoliutsionera. Moscow, 1966.Morozov, N. A. Povesti moei zhizni, vols. 1–2. Moscow, 1965.Stepniak-Kravchinskii, S. M. Podpol’naia Rossiia. Moscow, 1960.Figner, V. N. Zapechatlennyi trud, vols. 1–2. Moscow, 1964.Frolenko, M. Sobr. soch., vols. 1–2. Moscow, 1930–31.Charushin, N. A. O dalekom proshlom, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1973.
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International relations and foreign policy
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Borisov, lu. V. Russko-frantsuzskie otnosheniia posle Frankfurtskogo mira, 1871–1875. Moscow, 1951.Goriainov, S. M. Bosfor i Dardanelly. St. Petersburg, 1907.Kiniapina, N. S. Vneshniaia politika Rossii 2-i poloviny XIX v. Moscow, 1974.Lamsdorf, V. N. Drevnik, vols. 1–2. Moscow-Leningrad, 1926–34.Manfred, A. Z. Obrazovanie russko-frantsuzskogo soiuza. Moscow, 1975.Grosul, V. Ia., and E. E. Chertan. Rossiia i formirovanie rumynskogo nezavisimogo gosudarstva. Moscow, 1969.Beliaev, N. I. Russko-turetskaia voina 1877–1878. Moscow, 1956.Megrelidze, Sh. V. Zakavkaz’e Russko-turetskoi voine 1877–1878 gg. Tbilisi, 1972.Fortunatov, P. K. Voina 1877–1878 gg. i osvobozhdenie Bolgarii. Moscow, 1950.
Unification of Middle Asia With Russia
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Aminov, A., and A. Babakhodzhaev. Ekonomicheskie i politicheskie posledstviia prisoedineniia Srednei Azii k Rossii. Tashkent, 1966.Bekmakhanov, E. B. Prisoedinenie Kazakhstana k Rossii. Moscow, 1957.Davletov, D., and A. Il’iasov. Prisoedinenie Turkmenii k Rossii. Ashkhabad,1972.Dzhamgerchinov, B. D. Prisoedinenie Kirgizii k Rossii. Moscow, 1959.Erkhin, Kh. A. Prisoedinenie Turkestana k Rossii i razvitie natsional’no-osvoboditel’nogo i revoliutsionno-demokraticheskogo dvizheniia. Tashkent, 1959.Martirosov, S. Iz istorii anglo-russkogo sopernichestva v Srednei Azii. Ashkhabad,1966.Rozhkova, M. K. Ekonomicheskie sviazi Rossii so Srednei Aziei, 40–60-egg. XIX v. Moscow, 1963.Sadykov, A. S. Rossiia i Khiva v kontse XIX–nachale XX vv. Tashkent, 1972.Sokolov, A. Ia. Torgovaia politika Rossii v Srednei Azii i razvitie russko-afganskikh torgovykh otnoshenii. Tashkent, 1971.Tikhomirov, M. N. Prisoedinenie Merva k Rossii. Moscow, 1960.Khalfin, N. A. Prisoedinenie Srednei Azii k Rossii (60–90-e gg. XIX v. J. Moscow, 1965.
Western Ukraine, Transcarpathia, and northern Bucovina up to the early 20th century
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1895–1917
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Socioeconomic development
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Iz istorii imperializma v Rossii. Moscow-Leningrad, 1959.Kitanina, T. M. Voenno-infliatsionnye kontserny v Rossii 1914–1917. Leningrad, 1969.Laverychev, V. Ia. Monopolisticheskii kapital v tekstil’noi promyshlennosti Rossii (1900–1917 gg.). Moscow, 1963.Minarik, L. P. Ekonomicheskaia kharakteristika krupneishikh zemel’nykh sobstvennikov Rossii kontsa XIX–nachala XX v. Moscow, 1971.
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Ob osobennostiakh imperializma v Rossii: Sb. st. Moscow, 1963.Rabinovich, G. Kh. Krupnaia burzhuaziia i monopolisticheskii kapital v ekonomike Sibiri kontsa XIX–nachala XX vv. Tomsk, 1975.Sidorov, A. L. Istoricheskie predposylki Velikoi Oktiabr’skoi sotsialisticheskoi revoliutsii. Moscow, 1970.Sidorov, A. L. Finansovoe polozhenie Rossii v gody Pervoi mirovoi voiny. Moscow, 1960.Sidorov, A. L. Ekonomicheskoe polozhenie Rossii v gody Pervoi mirovoi voiny. Moscow, 1973.Sidel’nikov, S. M. Agrarnaia reforma Stolypina. Moscow, 1973.Tarnovskii, K. N. Formirovanie gosudarstvenno-monopolisticheskogo kapitalizma v Rossii v gody pervoi mirovoi voiny (na primere metallurgicheskoi promyshlennosti). Moscow, 1958.Fursenko, A. A. Neftianye tresty i mirovaia politika, 1880-e-1918. Moscow-Leningrad, 1965.Tsukernik, A. L. Sindikat “Prodamet”: Istoriko-ekonomicheskii ocherk, 1902-iiul’ 1914 gg. Moscow, 1959.Shatsillo, K. F. Russkii imperializm i razvitie flota nakanune 1-i mirovoi voiny (1906–1914 gg.). Moscow, 1968.Shepelev, L. E. Aktsionernye kompanii v Rossii. Leningrad, 1973.Anfimov, A. M. Zemel’naia arenda v Rossii v nachale XX v. Moscow, 1961.Anfimov, A. M. Krupnoe pomeshchich’e khoziaistvo Evropeiskoi Rossii (konets XIX–nachalo XX v.). Moscow, 1969.Anfimov, A. M. Rossiiskaia derevnia v gody Pervoi mirovoi voiny. Moscow, 1962.Goriushkin, L. M. Sibirskoe krest’ianstvo na rubezhe dvukh vekov. Novosibirsk, 1967.Dubrovskii, S. M. Sel’skoe khoziaistvo i krest’ianstvo Rossii v period imperializma. Moscow, 1975.Dubrovskii, S. M. Stolypinskaia zemel’naia reforma. Moscow, 1963.
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Avrekh, A. Ia. Stolypin i Tret’ia duma. Moscow, 1968.Davidovich, A. M. Samoderzhavie v epokhu imperializma. Moscow, 1975.Eroshkin, N. P. Samoderzhavie nakanune krakha. Moscow, 1975.Sidel’nikov, S. M. Obrazovanie i deiatel’nost’ I Gosudarstvennoi dumy. Moscow, 1962.Shatsillo, K. F. Rossiia pered Pervoi mirovoi voinoi: Vooruzhennye sily tsarizma v 1905–1914 gg. Moscow, 1974.
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Vospominaniia o II s”ezde RSDRP, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1973.Lepeshinskii, P. N. Na povorote, 4th ed. Moscow, 1955.Mitskevich, S. I. Revoliutsionnaia Moskva, 1888–1905. Moscow, 1940.Ol’minskii, M. S. Vtiur’me (1891–1898 gg.). Moscow, 1956.Sil’vin, M. A. Lenin v period zarozhdeniia partii. Leningrad, 1958.Shotman, A. V. Zapiski starogo bol’shevika, 3rd ed. Leningrad, 1963.Essen, M. M. Pervyi shturm. Moscow, 1957.Badaev, A. E. Bol’sheviki v Gosudarstvennoi dume, 8th ed. Moscow, 1954.
V gody podpol’ia. Moscow, 1964.Gordienko, I. M. Iz boevogo proshlogo (1914–1918 gg.). Moscow, 1957.Lebedev, M. I. Vospominaniia o lenskikh sobytiiakh 1912 g., [2nd ed.]. Moscow, 1962.Tsvetkov-Prosveshchenskii, A. K. Mezhdu dvumia revoliutsiiami (1907–1916 gg.). Moscow, 1957.
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Voennye organizatsii rossiiskogo proletariata i opyt ego vooruzhennoi bor’by, 1903–1917. Moscow, 1974.
Problemy gegemonii proletariata v demokraticheskoi revoliutsii (1905–fevral’ 1917). Moscow, 1975.Vovchik, A. F.’ Politika tsarizma po rabochemu voprosu v predre voliutsionnyi period (1895–1904). L’vov, 1964.Volin, M. S. Leninskaia “Iskra” (1900–1903 gg.). Moscow, 1964.Gusiatnikov, P. S. Nazrevanie revoliutsionnogo krizisa v Rossii v nachale XXv. Moscow, 1959.Gusiatnikov, P. S. Revoliutsionnoe studencheskoe dvizhenie v Rossii 1899–1907. Moscow, 1971.Il’in, A., and V. Il’in. Rozhdeniepartii, 1883–1904. Moscow, 1962.Kostin, A. F. Lenin—sozdatel’ partii novogo tipa (1894–1904 gg.). Moscow, 1970.
Leninskaia “Iskra”: Sb. st. Moscow, 1970.
Rozhdenie bol’shevizma. Moscow, 1974.Ushakov, A. V. Bor’ba partii za gegemoniiu proletariata v revoliutsionno-demokraticheskom dvizhenii Rossii (1895–1904). Moscow, 1974.Ushakov, A. V. Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie demokraticheskoi intelligentsii v Rossii, 1895–1904. Moscow, 1976.Aksenov, lu. S. Lenskie sobytiia 1912 g. Moscow, 1960.Burmistrova, T. Iu. Natsional’nyi vopros i rabochee dvizhenie v Rossii. Moscow, 1969.Kapshukov, S. G. Bor’ba bol’shevistskoi partii za armiiu v period pervoi mirovoi voiny (1914–mart 1917 g.). Moscow, 1957.Kniazeva, G. V. Bor’ba bol’shevikov za sochetanie nelegal’noi i legal’noi partiinoi raboty v gody reaktsii (1907–1910 gg.). Leningrad, 1964.Kastel’skaia, Z. D. Osnovnye predposylki vosstaniia 1916 goda v Uzbekistane [2nd ed.]. Moscow, 1972.Kruze, E. E. Peterburgskie rabochie v 1912–1914 gg. Moscow-Leningrad, 1961.Laverychev, V. Ia. Po tu storonu barrikad: Iz istorii bor’by moskovskoi burzhuazii s revoliutsiei. Moscow, 1967.Lavrov, P. A. Rabochee dvizhenie na Ukraine v period novogo revoliutsionnogo pod” ema 1910–1914 gg. Kiev, 1966.
Partiia bol’shevikov v gody Pervoi mirovoi voiny: Sverzhenie monarkhii v Rossii. Moscow, 1963.Tursunov, Kh. Vosstanie 1916 g. v Srednei Azii i Kazakhstane. Tashkent, 1962.
Revolution of 1905–07
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Agrarnoe dvizhenie v Rossii v 1905–1906 gg.: Obzory, parts 1–2. St. Petersburg, 1908.
Listovki bol’shevistskikh organizatsii v pervoi russkoi revoliutsii 1905–1907 gg.: Sb., parts 1–3. Moscow, 1956.
Partiia bol’shevikov v revoliutsii 1905–1907 gg.: Dok-ty i mat-ly. Moscow, 1961.
Pervaia russkaia revoliutsiia i ee istoricheskoe znachenie (collection of documents). Moscow, 1975.
Revoliutsiia 1905–1907 gg. v. Rossii: Dok-ty i mat-ly [vols. 1–16]. Moscow, 1955–65.
===MEMOIRS===
Burenin, N. E. Liudi bol’shevistskogo podpol’ia. Moscow, 1967.Vasil’ev-Iuzhin, M. I. V ogne pervoi revoliutsii. Moscow, 1955.
Velikie, nezabyvaemye dni: Sb. vospominanii uchastnikov revoliutsii 1905–1907 gg. Moscow, 1970.Lychev, I. A. Potemkintsy, 3rd ed. Moscow, 1965.Liadov, M. N. Iz zhizni partii v 1903–1907 gg. Moscow, 1956.
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Bogutskaia, L. Ocherki po istorii vooruzhennykh vosstanii v revoliutsii 1905–1907 gg. Moscow, 1956.
Bol’shevistskaia partiia v revoliutsii 1905–1907 gg. Moscow, 1975.Vetoshkin, M. K. Revoliutsiia 1905–1907 gg. v Sibiri i na Dal’nem Vostoke. Chita, 1955.Vlasova, M. N. Proletariat Finliandii v gody pervoi russkoi revoliutsii. Petrozavodsk, 1961.Dubrovskii, S. M. Krest’ianskoe dvizhenie v revoliutsii 1905–1907 gg. Moscow, 1956.Erman, L. K. Intelligentsiia v pervoi russkoi revoliutsii. Moscow, 1966.Korablev, Iu. A. Revoliutsionnye vosstaniia na Baltike v 1905–1906 gg. Leningrad, 1956.
Pervaia russkaia revoliutsiia 1905–1907 gg. i mezhdunarodnoe revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie: Sb. st., parts 1–2. Moscow, 1955–56.
Pervaia russkaia revoliutsiia i ee istoricheskoe znachenie. Moscow, 1975.Petrov, V. A. Ocherki po istorii revoliutsionnogo dvizheniia v russkoi armii v 1905 g. Moscow-Leningrad, 1964.Polianskii, N. N. Tsarskie voennye sudy v borb’e s revoliutsiei 1905–1907 gg. Moscow, 1958.Piaskovskii, A. V. Revoliutsiia 1905–1907 gg. v Rossii. Moscow, 1966.
Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie v armii v gody pervoi russkoi revoliutsii: Sb. st. Moscow, 1955.
Revoliutsiia 1905–1907 gg. v natsional’nykh raionakh Rossii: Sb. st., 2nd ed. Moscow, 1955.
Revoliutsiia 1905–1907 gg. v Rossii. Moscow, 1975.Spiridonov, I. V. Vserossiiskaia politicheskaia stachka v oktiabre 1905 g. Moscow, 1955.Chermenskii, E. D. Burzhuaziia i tsarizm v pervoi russkoi revoliutsii, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1970.Iakovlev, N. N. Vooruzhennye vosstaniia v dekabre 1905 g. Moscow, 1957.
Pervaia russkaia revoliutsiia 1905–1907 gg.: Annotirovannyi ukazatel’ literatury. Moscow, 1965.
February Revolution of 1917
===REFERENCES===
Burdzhalov, E. N. Vtoraia russkaia revoliutsiia: Vosstanie v Petrograde. Moscow, 1967.Burdzhalov, E. N. Vtoraia russkaia revoliutsiia: Moskva, Front, Periferiia. Moscow, 1971.Znamenskii, O. N. liul’skii krizis 1917 g. Moscow-Leningrad, 1964.Ioffe, G. Z. Fevral’skaia revoliutsiia 1917 g. v anglo-amerikanskoi burzhuaznoi istoriografii. Moscow, 1970.Chermenskii, E. D. Fevral’skaia burzhuazno-demokraticheskaia revoliutsiia 1917 g. v Rossii. Moscow, 1959.
===MEMOIRS===
Rodzianko, M. V. Krushenie imperii, 3rd ed. Leningrad, 1929.Roshal’, M. G. Naputiakh revoliutsii. Moscow, 1957.
International relations and foreign policy
===SOURCES===
Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia v epokhu imperializma, series 2: 1900–1913, vols. 18–20. Moscow, 1938–40.
Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia v epokhu imperializma, series 3: 1914–1917. vols. 1–10. Moscow-Leningrad, 1931–38.
===MEMOIRS===
Izvol’skii, A. P. Vospominaniia. Petrograd-Moscow, 1924.Solov’ev, Iu. Ia. Vospominaniia diplomata (1893–1922) [2nd ed.]. Moscow, 1959.
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Bovykin, V. I. Ocherki istorii vneshnei politiki Rossii: Konets XIX v.-1917 g. Moscow, 1960.Korolev, N. V. Strany luzhnoi Ameriki i Rossiia (1890–1917 gg.). Kishinev, 1972.Mannanov, B. S. Iz istorii russko-iranskikh otnoshenii v kontse XIX–nachale XX v. Tashkent, 1964.Rozental’, E. M. Diplomaticheskaia istoriia russko-frantsuzskogo soiuza v nachale XX v. Moscow, 1960.Astaf’ev, I. I. Russko-germanskie diplomaticheskie otnosheniia 1905–1911 gg. Moscow, 1972.Bestuzhev, I. V. Bor’ba Rossii po voprosam vneshnei politiki, 1906–1910. Moscow, 1961.Bovykin, V. I. Iz istorii vozniknoveniia Pervoi mirovoi voiny: Otnosheniia Rossii i Frantsii v 1912–1914 gg. Moscow, 1961.Ignat’ev, A. V. Russko-angliiskie otnosheniia nakanune 1-i mirovoi voiny (1908–1914). Moscow, 1962.Marinov, V. A. Rossiia i Iaponiia pered Pervoi mirovoi voinoi (1905–1914 gg.). Moscow, 1974.
Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05
===SOURCES===
Russko-iaponskaia voina 1904–1905 gg.: Deistviia sukhoputnykh voisk: Sb. dok-tov. Moscow, 1941.
===MEMOIRS===
Grulev, M. V shtabakh i na poliakh Dal’nego Vostoka, parts 1–2. St. Petersburg, 1908–09.Kuropatkin, A. N. Zapiski o russko-iaponskoi voine, 2nd ed. Berlin, 1911.
Dnevnik polkovnika S. A. Rashevskogo: Port-Artur, 1904. Moscow-Leningrad, 1954.
===REFERENCES===
Kutakov, L. N. Portsmutskii mirnyi dogovor: Iz istorii otnoshenii la-ponii s Rossiei i SSSR, 1905–1945 gg. Moscow, 1961.Romanov, B. A. Ocherki diplomaticheskoi istorii russkoiaponskoi voiny, 1895–1907, 2nd ed. Moscow-Leningrad, 1955.Sorokin, A. I. Oborona Port-Artura, 3rd ed. Moscow, 1954.Sorokin, A. I. Russko-iaponskaia voina 1904–1905 gg.: Voenno-istoricheskii ocherk. Moscow, 1956.
World War I (1914–18)
===SOURCES===
Padenie tsarskogo rezhima: Stenografich, otchety doprosov i pokazanii, dannykh v 1917 g. v Chrezv. sledstvennoi komissii Vremennogo pravitel’stva, vols. 1–7. Leningrad, 1924–27.
===MEMOIRS===
Bonch-Bruevich, M. D. Vsia vlast’ Sovetam. Moscow, 1964.Brusilov, A. Moi vospominaniia, 5th ed. Moscow, 1963.Verkhovskii, A. I. Na trudnomperevale. Moscow, 1959.Gerasimov, M. N. Probuzhdenie. Moscow, 1965.Ignat’ev, A. A. Piat’desiat let v stroiu, vols. 1–2. Moscow, 1959.Malinovskii, R. Ia. Soldaty Rossii. Moscow, 1969.Paleolog, M. Tsarskaia Rossiia nakanune revoliutsii. Moscow-Petro-grad, 1923.Polivanov, A. A. Iz dnevnikov i vospominanii po dolzhnosti voennogo ministra i ego pomoshchnika, 1907–1916 gg. Moscow, 1924.Samoilo, A. A. Dve zhizni, 2nd ed. Leningrad, 1963.
Vospominaniia Sukhomlinova. Moscow-Leningrad, 1926.Shaposhnikov, B. M. Vospominaniia: Voenno-nauchnye trudy. Moscow, 1974.
===REFERENCES===
Verzhkhovskii, D. V., and V. F. Liakhov. Pervaia mirovaia voina 1914–1918 gg. Moscow, 1964.Zaionchkovskii, A. M. Mirovaia voina 1914–1918 gg., 3rd ed., vols. 1–3. Moscow, 1938–39.
Istoriia Pervoi mirovoi voiny 1914–1918 gg., vols. 1–2. Moscow, 1975.
Pervaia mirovaia voina 1914–1918 gg.: Sb. st. Moscow, 1968.Ignat’ev, A. V. Vneshniaia politika Vremennogo pravitel’stva. Moscow, 1974.Lebedev, V. V. Mezhdunarodnoe polozhenie Rossii nakanune Oktiabr’skoi revoliutsii. Moscow, 1967.Great October Socialist Revolution of 1917; formation of a soviet socialist state. The February Bourgeois Democratic Revolution was the prologue to the October Revolution. Only a socialist revolution could ensure social progress, lead the country out of war and ruin, abolish the bourgeois-pomeshchik system, end all forms of social and national oppression, and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat essential to the construction of a socialist society. The dual power that had been established in March—the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry—could only be a temporary phenomenon. The struggle for power was the order of the day; it defined the revolution’s next phase.
On Apr. 3 (16), 1917, Lenin returned to Petrograd after many years spent in exile. In his April Theses and other works, Lenin worked out a specific, theoretically substantiated plan of struggle for the transition from the bourgeois democratic revolution to a socialist one and defined the driving forces called upon to carry out the revolution; in addition, he set forth the party’s strategy and tactics in the struggle for the victory of the socialist revolution and for the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The antipopular policies of the Provisional Government, which continued the imperialist war, were exposed by Lenin’s theses, which called for a struggle to achieve a general, democratic peace. The party’s economic platform was formulated in the theses, which demanded that all land in the country be nationalized and pomeshchik lands confiscated, that all banks be amalgamated into one national bank to be controlled by the soviets, and that social production and the distribution of goods be brought under the control of the soviet.
These interrelated goals, of vital importance to the fate of the country and the people, could be achieved only by establishing a dictatorship of the soviets. The theses provided support for the position that a republic of soviets was a higher type of state system than a bourgeois parliamentary republic, and the soviets were described as the best form of the dictatorship of the proletariat. On this basis, the party advanced the slogan “All power to the soviets!”; under the conditions then existing, such a goal could be realized peacefully.
Lenin’s theses and his reports to the Seventh All-Russian (April) Conference of the RSDLP(B) served as a basis for the resolutions adopted by the conference, which worked out the party’s policies on the fundamental issues of the revolution. In its resolutions, the conference pointed out that the Russian working class (15 million wage laborers, of whom the industrial proletariat accounted for more than 3.5 million), guided by the Bolshevik party, was emerging as the revolution’s leader and primary driving force; its ally was the rural poor, who numbered in the millions and constituted as much as 65 percent of the peasantry in 1917.
When the party began functioning legally in late February, it had about 24,000 members; by the end of April, it had more than 100,000. Using the slogans “Peace to all peoples,” “Land to the peasants,” and “All power to the soviets,” the Bolsheviks sought to ally the working class with the poor peasantry to form the decisive social force in the struggle for the victory of the socialist revolution. They carried on multifaceted political work in city and countryside and in the army and navy. The party of the Bolsheviks strengthened its influence daily in the soviets of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies, in the soviets of peasants’ deputies, and in soldiers’ committees, trade unions, factory committees, and cultural-educational societies; everywhere it supplanted the petit bourgeois parties. An intense open struggle for the masses took place between the Bolsheviks on the one hand and the SR’s (about 400,000 members in the summer of 1917), the Mensheviks (35,000–45,000 members in May 1917), and the Constitutional Democrats on the other.
The first political crisis—the April Crisis of 1917—took place on April 20 and 21 (May 3 and 4), when the workers and soldiers of Petrograd took action against the Provisional Government’s policy of continuing the imperialist war; the crisis demonstrated that dual power was to be short-lived. The SR-Menshevik leadership of the soviet saved the government of the capitalists, acceding to the creation of a coalition cabinet of ministers. The first coalition Provisional Government was formed on May 5 (18) with Prince L’vov as its chairman; it continued the antipopular policies of the first government.
The First All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies was convened on June 3 (16), 1917. Because the majority was held by the Mensheviks and SR’s, the congress adopted a policy of compromise that supported the coalition government. The policy provoked discontent among the masses, which spilled over into the June Crisis of 1917. On June 18 (July 1), about 500,000 workers and soldiers of the capital took to the streets under the slogans “All power to the soviets,” “Down with the war,” and “Down with the ten capitalist ministers.” Demonstrations were also held in other cities.
The Provisional Government, honoring the tsarist government’s commitments to Great Britain and France, launched an offensive on the front on June 18 (July 1). Known as the June offensive, it ended in failure; news of the offensive provoked a storm of protest from soldiers and workers. A new political crisis arose: the July Days of 1917. On July 4 (17) a peaceful demonstration of more than 500,000 persons was held in Petrograd under the leadership of the Bolsheviks. At this time, however, the counterrevolution was able, with the help of conciliationists, to consolidate its forces to a considerable extent. The Provisional Government ordered General P. A. Polovtsev, the commander of the troops of the Petrograd Military District, to smash the demonstration with iunkera (cadets), cossacks, and detachments of counterrevolutionary officers; about 56 persons were killed, and 650 injured. The operation was carried out with the knowledge of the leaders of the conciliationist All-Russian Central Executive Committee, which had been elected at the All-Russian Congress of Soviets; its chairman was N. S. Chkheidze. The All-Russian Central Executive Committee, dominated by SR’s and Mensheviks, declared the Provisional Government a “government of salvation” and recognized its “unlimited authority and unlimited power.”
A phase of repression began. Lenin was forced to go underground. Dual power and the revolution’s peaceful period of development came to an end. All power passed into the hands of the counterrevolutionary government, headed by A. F. Kerensky from July 8 (21), which embarked on a path leading to civil war. Betrayed by the SR’s and Mensheviks, the soviets were no longer agencies of power: they had become appendages of the counterrevolutionary Provisional Government. The new political situation demanded new tactics of struggle.
While underground, Lenin wrote a number of works that provided an analysis of the new situation and defined the tasks of the party and the working class in the new stage of the revolution. Without rejecting the struggle for a republic of soviets, he advised the temporary withdrawal of the slogan “All power to the soviets!” as a rallying cry for the peaceful development of the revolution and argued for a policy aimed at staging an armed uprising—the only realistic means of achieving the victory of socialist revolution given the conditions at the time.
The instructions of the party’s leader provided a basis for the resolutions of the Sixth Congress of the RSDLP(B), held in Petrograd from July 26 to Aug. 3 (Aug. 8–16), 1917, which represented nearly 240,000 party members. The Sixth Congress steered the party toward the preparation of an armed uprising to establish a dictatorship of the proletariat. Political, economic, and ideological tasks were defined in its resolutions, which pointed to the maturing revolutionary crisis that was bringing the future victory closer. The congress elected the Central Committee of the party, with Lenin as the leader. The Central Committee of the RSDLP(B) issued a manifesto calling on the revolutionary masses to prepare themselves for a decisive assault on Russian capitalism.
Seeking to strengthen its position, the bourgeoisie worked to establish an overt military dictatorship. A counterrevolutionary conspiracy was prepared under the leadership of the commander in chief, L. G. Kornilov, who on August 25 (September 7) moved troops from the front to Petrograd. The Bolshevik party mobilized the Red Guard and revolutionary soldiers to put down the rebellion. The suppression of the Kornilovshchina, or Kornilov revolt, disorganized and weakened the counterrevolutionary camp, demonstrated the might of the revolutionary forces, and enhanced the prestige of the Bolsheviks; it was a major step along the road to socialist revolution.
The antipopular policies of the bourgeois government brought the country to the brink of catastrophe. Iron and steel production dropped sharply, and the extraction of coal and oil suffered a serious decline; railroad transportation was thrown into almost total disarray, and fuel and food were in extremely short supply. In 1917 industrial output was 30.8 percent less than in 1916. In the autumn, about half the enterprises in the Urals, the Donbas, and other industrial regions were shut down, and 50 plants in Petrograd halted operations. The country was gripped by mass unemployment, and food prices rose continuously. The real wages of workers were 40–50 percent lower than in 1913. Daily expenditures on the war exceeded 66 million rubles. The burden of taxation fell mainly on the working people.
The Provisional Government responded by printing new money and floating new loans. In an eight-month period it issued more currency (9.5 billion rubles) than the tsarist government had issued in the first 32 months of the war. The real value of the ruble fell to 32.6 percent of what it had been in June 1914. In October 1917, Russia’s national debt was nearly 50 billion rubles, of which more than 11.2 billion rubles was owed to foreign powers. The country stood on the verge of bankruptcy.
Lenin’s works, especially The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It, and the party’s resolutions indicated a way out of the impasse: the revolutionary transformation of Russia. The Russian proletariat had adopted new forms of struggle by the fall of 1917. The trade union movement became more active, the number of trade union members increased (in October 1917 more than 2 million industrial and nonindustrial workers belonged to trade unions), and Bolshevik influence in the trade unions was strengthened. In addition to trade unions, workers had factory committees in enterprises. The strike movement at this time was notable for its exceptionally high degree of organization and sense of political purpose. In September and October 1917 strikes were staged by miners in the Donbas, metallurgical workers in the Urals, petroleum workers in Baku, and textile workers in the Ivanovo-Voznesensk industrial region, as well as by employees of 44 railroads. Mass strikes alone involved more than 1 million workers. Worker control was established at many enterprises. The working class had come close to recognizing the need to take power into its own hands; most workers supported the party of the Bolsheviks.
Socialist in nature, the movement of the proletariat joined in a single revolutionary stream with the struggle of the peasantry—first and foremost the poor peasants—for land, a struggle that assumed the character of a peasant war. From August to October 1917 alone, there were more than 2,000 peasant disturbances: 690 were recorded in August, 630 in September, and 747 in October. Millions of soldiers went over to the side of revolution. The national liberation movement of the oppressed peoples of the border regions intensified, and classes became more clearly demarcated.
The mass bolshevization of the soviets began after the suppression of the Kornilovshchina. Many soviets, notably those of Petrograd and Moscow, came over to the side of the Bolsheviks, who now found themselves supported by the country’s principal centers. The slogan “All power to the soviets!” was revived; given the new circumstances, it was a call for an armed uprising and the overthrow of the Provisional Government, which became politically isolated.
Seeking to remain in power, the Provisional Government, supported by the petit bourgeois parties, attempted to win the popular masses to its side through various demagogic slogans. On September 1 (14) it proclaimed Russia a republic. The Directory—the Council of Five, headed by Kerensky—was established to govern the country. Although the parties of compromise used all means at their disposal to salvage the rule of the bourgeoisie, including the convocation of the Democratic Conference and the Preparliament, they found themselves in a profound crisis. A left wing took shape among the SR’s; in early December 1917 it became an independent organization: the Left SR’s. The schism in the Menshevik party deepened. Both the Mensheviks and the SR’s lost members.
A nationwide crisis had ripened in the country. Guided by the resolutions of the Sixth Party Congress and taking into account the specific circumstances that had developed in the country, the Bolsheviks redoubled their preparations for an armed uprising. In a series of letters (to the Central Committee and the Petrograd and Moscow committees of the Bolshevik party) and articles, Lenin called for preparations for the armed uprising to be sped up, argued that insurrection should be treated as an art, and worked out a plan for carrying out the uprising. The RSDLP(B) became stronger and more united. Between March and October its membership increased 15-fold, to about 350,000. The largest party organizations were in Moscow (including the central industrial region), which had 70,000 members, Petrograd (including Petrograd Province), which had 60,000 members, and the Urals, which had 35,000 members. About 100,000 Communists worked in the party organizations of the regions inhabited by non-Slavic nationalities.
The historic session of the Central Committee of the RSDLP(B) at which the uprising was discussed was held on October 10 (23) and October 16 (29) under the leadership of Lenin, who had secretly returned to Petrograd from Finland. The Central Committee members L. B. Kamenev and G. E. Zinoviev opposed Lenin’s plan for carrying out the uprising, asserting that a revolt was premature and doomed to fail. Their position was repudiated. L. D. Trotsky repeatedly argued in the Petrograd soviet that the uprising should be postponed until the Second Congress of Soviets. He attempted to bind the party to a policy of resolving the question of power by a vote of the delegates at the upcoming congress; given the historical circumstances, this meant thwarting preparations for the uprising.
On October 12 (25) the Executive Committee of the Petrograd soviet adopted a resolution establishing a military revolutionary committee (MRC), for which it ratified a statute. The MRC became the legal center for the preparation of the armed uprising. On October 16 (29) the Central Committee of the RSDLP(B) again discussed the question of the uprising and elected the party’s Military Revolutionary Center (A. S. Bubnov, F. E. Dzerzhinskii, J. V. Stalin, Ia. M. Sverdlov, and M. S. Uritskii), which formed part of the MRC and became its command center. Among the many who worked actively in the MRC were V. A. Antonov-Ovseenko, G. I. Bokii, G. I. Chudnovskii, P. E. Dybenko, S. V. Kosior, N. V. Krylenko, M. I. Latsis, P. E. Lazimir, and N. I. Podvoiskii. Lenin inspired and directed all the party’s work in preparing and carrying out the uprising.
The revolution’s assault force was the Red Guard, a substantial portion of which consisted of working-class youth and members of the socialist youth leagues that had been formed in 1917. At the beginning of the October Armed Uprising the Red Guard numbered about 20,000 in the capital alone, a figure that increased to 40,000 in the course of the uprising. According to incomplete data, the Red Guard in other cities numbered more than 200,000 in October and November. The Petrograd garrison (150,000 soldiers), the Baltic Fleet (more than 80,000 men and hundreds of warships), the majority of the soldiers in the field, especially on the Northern and Western fronts, and many garrisons in the rear went over to the side of revolution. The Bolsheviks, in other words, had won over the bulk of the country’s armed forces, which were supported by the heroic proletariat and the masses of poor peasants, numbering in the millions.
The uprising, which began on October 24 (November 6), moved quickly toward a victorious conclusion, according to Lenin’s plan. On the following morning the MRC published Lenin’s appeal announcing the victory of the revolution: “To the Citizens of Russia!” At 10:40 P.M. the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies opened at the Smol’nyi. On the strength of the victory of the uprising, it proclaimed the transfer of power to the soviets throughout the country. At 2:00 A.M. on October 26 (November 8), the Winter Palace was taken by storm, and the Provisional Government arrested. After a report by Lenin, the congress approved his Decree on Peace, which invited all belligerent countries and peoples to enter immediately into negotiations to conclude a general, democratic peace without annexations or indemnities. The congress also approved the Decree on Land, under which pomeshchik land was confiscated and all land, minerals, forests, and bodies of water were nationalized; the peasants received more than 150 million hectares of land.
The congress elected the supreme agency of soviet power, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (All-Russian CEC); Kamenev served as chairman until November 8 (21), when Sverdlov assumed the post. The congress also created the Council of People’s Commissars (Sovnarkom), the first worker-peasant soviet government; its chairman was Lenin. The construction of a new type of soviet state—the dictatorship of the proletariat—began with the formation of the All-Russian CEC and the Sovnarkom.
The counterrevolutionary forces, led by Kerensky, who had fled to Pskov (the headquarters of the Northern Front) on October 25 (November 7), rose against the new government in the Kerensky-Krasnov Rebellion and the Iunker Rebellion. Their efforts to overthrow Soviet power marked the beginning of the Civil War. The rebellions were quickly put down; the revolutionary forces, under Krylenko, occupied the General Headquarters of the Supreme Commander in Chief, a hotbed of counterrevolution, on November 20 (December 3).
The establishment of Soviet power in Petrograd and the historic resolutions of the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets initiated the triumphant march of Soviet power throughout the country. Immediately after the victory of the armed uprising in the capital on October 25 (November 7), a counterrevolutionary uprising was suppressed, and Soviet power established, in Moscow on November 2 (15). All the peoples of Russia resolutely embarked on the path of the establishment of Soviet power. On December 12 (25), the First All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets proclaimed the establishment of Soviet power in the Ukraine and initiated the formation of the Ukrainian SSR. Within a short period, Soviet power had triumphed throughout the country, although in the areas inhabited by non-Slavic nationalities, the socialist revolution encountered major problems, owing to the socioeconomic backwardness of a number of regions, the weakness of the local proletariat and Bolshevik organizations, and the complex relations existing between the various peoples.
A great revolutionary transformation, aimed at carrying out the fundamental tasks of social progress, began with the first days of Soviet power. On Nov. 2 (15), 1917, the Soviet government promulgated the Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia, which proclaimed the equality and sovereignty of all the peoples of the country; the right of all the peoples to free self-determination, including secession and the formation of independent states; the abolition of national and religious privileges and restrictions; and the free development of national minorities and ethnic groups. On November 20 (December 3), in the appeal “To All Muslim Toilers of Russia and the East,” the Sovnarkom proclaimed the national and cultural institutions, customs, and beliefs of Muslims to be free and inviolable and guaranteed Muslims complete freedom in structuring their life.
In a number of regions, the forces of domestic counterrevolution offered armed resistance and initiated civil war. In January and February 1918, Red Guard detachments from Moscow and Petrograd and sailors from the Baltic Fleet, along with workers of the Donbas, Rostov, and Kharkov, crushed the rebellion of Ataman A. M. Kaledin on the Don and smashed the forces of the bourgeois-nationalist Ukrainian Central Rada. In December 1917 and January 1918, Red Guard units from Petrograd and the Urals suppressed the rebellion of A. I. Dutov in the Southern Urals. Between October 1917 and January-March 1918, Soviet power triumphed in the central provinces, the Ukraine, the Baltic region, Byelorussia, the Northern Caucasus, Azerbaijan, the Volga Region, the Urals, Siberia, the Far East, Middle Asia, and Kazakhstan; on the fronts, Soviet power triumphed in the army in the field. The revolutionary forces were defeated in Georgia and Armenia, where power was captured by the Mensheviks and Dashnaks, supported by Great Britain, Germany, and Turkey.
The Great October Socialist Revolution overthrew the regime of the capitalists and pomeshchiki, eliminated social and national oppression, established the dictatorship of the proletariat, and opened the way for the building of socialism and communism. The inspirer and organizer of the victory of the October Revolution, a major event in world history, was the Communist Party, under Lenin, which skillfully united in one revolutionary stream the socialist struggle of the working class to overthrow the bourgeoisie and establish a dictatorship of the proletariat, the general democratic movement for peace, the peasant movement to seize pomeshchik lands, and the national liberation movement of the oppressed peoples seeking national equality. The alliance of the working class with the poor peasantry was the decisive force in the struggle for the victory of the socialist revolution. As a result of the victory of the October Revolution, the oppressed and exploited working class achieved dominance, and the Communist Party became the ruling party of the socialist state.
The Great October Socialist Revolution broke through the front of world imperialism. Its victory marked a fundamental turning point in world history. The world split into two systems—socialism and capitalism. The general crisis of capitalism deepened. The October Revolution ushered in the era of proletarian and national liberation revolutions and initiated the transitional period from capitalism to socialism; it marked out the high road to socialism for the peoples of all the countries of the world.
Under Lenin’s guidance the Soviet government, formed at the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets, led in the abolition of the old, bourgeois-pomeshchik state apparatus and the construction of a new, socialist state of workers and peasants. In the process, it relied on the support of the soviets, which became the state form of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The creation of the agencies of the Soviet state began. The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission (Cheka) was formed under the Sovnarkom on Dec. 7 (20), 1917, to conduct the struggle against counterrevolution and sabotage; its chairman was F. E. Dzerzhinskii. A decree of the All-Russian CEC and the Sovnarkom created a new court on November 22 (December 5). A decree of Jan. 15 (28), 1918, established the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army, and a decree of Jan. 29 (Feb. 11), 1918, established the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Navy (see).
The expropriation of the bourgeoisie and the pomeshchiki brought about an immediate improvement in the lot of the working people. The Soviet government assumed control of the food supply. Hundreds of thousands of working-class families in the cities were moved from basements and barracks into houses that had previously belonged to capitalists, merchants, and pomeshchiki. Free education, free medical services, and the eight-hour workday were instituted, and a decree on insurance for industrial and nonindustrial workers was promulgated. Social estates, ranks, and titles were abolished, and the general designation “citizen of the Russian Republic” was established. Freedom of conscience was proclaimed; the church was made separate from the state, and the school from the church. Women were guaranteed the same rights as men in all spheres of public life. The inequitable treaties concluded by the tsarist and Provisional governments were abrogated.
Implementing the basic principles of its nationalities policy, the government of the Russian Republic recognized the right of the Ukraine to self-determination on Dec. 3 (16), 1917; nine days later, the Ukrainian SSR was formed. The independence of Finland was recognized on December 18 (31). On Aug. 29, 1918, the Sovnarkom issued a decree abrogating tsarist Russia’s treaties of the late 18th century with Austria and Germany on the partition of Poland and recognizing the Polish people’s right to independence.
Aware that support for convening the Constituent Assembly was widespread among the people, the Soviet government allowed it to open in Petrograd on Jan. 5 (18), 1918. The assembly’s members, however, had been elected in November (on the basis of the list of candidates of old parties that had been prepared while the Provisional Government was still in power) and during the period when Soviet power was being established; they did not reflect the new alignment of class forces in the country. The majority of the members were right SR’s, Mensheviks, and Constitutional Democrats; holding counterrevolutionary views, they refused to recognize Soviet power or to accept the Declaration of the Rights of the Working and Exploited People. The Constituent Assembly was dissolved on January 6 (19) by decree of the All-Russian CEC.
The workers’ and peasants’ interests found genuine representation at the Third All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies and the Third All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Peasants’ Deputies, which convened in January 1918. The congresses merged on January 13 (26): this move facilitated the unification of all soviets of peasants’ deputies with soviets of workers’ deputies and strengthened the alliance of the working class and poor peasantry—the political foundation of the Soviet state.
The joint congress of soviets adopted Lenin’s Declaration of the Rights of the Working and Exploited People, which proclaimed Russia a republic of soviets and legally confirmed the soviets as the state form of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The declaration stated that the chief tasks of Soviet power were to end all exploitation of man by man and the division of society into classes, to suppress the resistance of the exploiters, and to organize society along socialist lines and build socialism. The congress approved the decree On the Federal Institutions of the Russian Republic and formalized the creation of the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic.
The Russian Republic was established on the basis of a free union of peoples as a federation of soviet national republics. The peoples inhabiting the Russian Republic began forming state systems in the spring of 1918. A special agency, the People’s Commissariat of Nationalities (Narkomnats), was established as part of the government of the Russian Republic. The first state formations were the Terek Soviet Republic, proclaimed in Piatigorsk in March 1918 at the Second Congress of Soviets of the Peoples of Terek; the Tavrida Soviet Socialist Republic, proclaimed in Simferopol’ on March 21 by a decree of the Tavrida Central Executive Committee; the Don Soviet Republic, formed on March 23 by a decree of the military revolutionary committee of the Oblast of the Don Host; the Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, proclaimed on April 30 in Tashkent at the Fifth Congress of Soviets of the Turkestan Krai; the Kuban’-Black Sea Soviet Republic, proclaimed at the Third Congress of Soviets of the Kuban’ and the Black Sea Region (held May 27–30 in Ekaterinodar); and the Stavropol’ Soviet Republic, proclaimed on Jan. 1 (14), 1918. The Northern Caucasus Soviet Republic, which united the Kuban’-Black Sea, Terek, and Stavropol’ soviet republics, was formed on July 7 at the First Congress of Soviets of the Northern Caucasus.
The Soviet government immediately set about implementing socialist economic reforms. On Nov. 14 (27), 1917, worker control over production and distribution was codified in law. The State Bank was nationalized in October, and private banks in December. The socialist nationalization of enterprises that produced for the government (such as the Obukhov, Baltic, and Izhora factories), the state railroads, and private enterprises (such as the Putilov Factory) began in November. The Supreme Council on the National Economy was created on December 2 (15) to administer the national economy.
In the interest of freeing the country from economic bondage, the foreign and domestic debts incurred by the tsarist government and the bourgeois Provisional Government were renounced by a decree of the All-Russian CEC dated Jan. 21 (Feb. 3), 1918. A decree on the nationalization of foreign trade was promulgated on Apr. 22, 1918, and a decree nationalizing all large-scale industry, on June 28. The socialization of the means of production and their transformation into the property of all the people destroyed the foundation of the capitalist mode of production and created a socialist structure in industry. The political and economic power of the bourgeoisie and the pomeshchiki was destroyed. The reins of power were now firmly in the hands of the socialist state.
Revolutionary political and economic reforms were accompanied by cultural reforms. A genuine cultural revolution began. Primary, secondary, and higher education underwent a fundamental reform, and work to eliminate illiteracy and near-illiteracy among the adult population was carried out on a broad scale.
On Dec. 2 (15), 1917 the Sovnarkom concluded an agreement with Germany on the temporary cessation of hostilities, and on December 9 (22) negotiations began, during which German imperialism presented Soviet Russia with extortionate peace terms. Foreign and domestic circumstances forced Russia to accede to the terms for the sake of preserving the gains made by the Great October Socialist Revolution and the Soviet state.
The Left Communists, headed by N. I. Bukharin, opposed the Leninist line, which called for the immediate conclusion of a peace treaty. They insisted that revolutionary war be declared against Germany, although they knew that the country could not wage a war and that the existence of the Soviet state would be threatened. Trotsky, who headed the delegation to Brest-Litovsk, refused to accept the German terms and put forth the formula “neither peace nor war.” The peace negotiations were suspended on Jan. 28 (Feb. 10), 1918, and on February 18, Austro-German troops began an offensive along the entire front.
The old army, which was weary from the protracted war and had completely lost its combat effectiveness, fell back; the Red Army had only just been created. German troops occupied the Baltic region and a considerable portion of Byelorussia and the Ukraine; they then launched an offensive against Petrograd. A grave threat loomed over the Soviet republic. On February 22 the Sovnarkom published the appeal “The Socialist Fatherland Is in Danger!” Tens of thousands of workers and demobilized soldiers volunteered for the Red Army on February 23, a date that has since been observed as the birthday of the Red Army and Red Navy. The heroic resistance of the Red Guard detachments and the units of the young Red Army halted the enemy offensive against Petrograd.
Lenin’s policy of a respite from war triumphed in the party’s Central Committee and in the Sovnarkom. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed on Mar. 3, 1918; under it, Soviet Russia lost about 1 million sq km of territory. The Seventh (Extraordinary) Congress of the RCP(B), held March 6–8, approved the Leninist line on the treaty and completely rejected the position of Trotsky and the Left Communists. The Extraordinary Fourth All-Russian Congress of Soviets in Moscow, to which the Soviet government had moved on March 10 and 11, ratified the peace treaty on March 15. Russia had withdrawn from World War I.
The conditions had now been created for a transition to peaceful construction. The plan for embarking on socialist construction was drafted by Lenin. The party and the Soviet government concentrated on rebuilding the economy, setting economic life on a normal course, reorganizing the national economy, and laying the foundations of a socialist economy. The paramount tasks put forth by Lenin were to raise labor productivity, organize socialist competition, and work out a new, conscious discipline. Socialist construction began in extremely difficult circumstances. There was not enough bread in Moscow, Petrograd, and other industrial centers in the spring of 1918. The workers and their families were forced to go to the countryside. The work force in large-scale industry declined considerably, presenting a serious danger to the Soviet system.
The Soviet government moved to resolve the food question by revolutionary methods. The producing provinces had sufficient grain and other foodstuffs, but the owners of most of the grain, the kulaks, refused to sell to the Soviet state; they thwarted the grain monopoly by hoarding and speculating in grain. The class struggle between the kulaks and the poor peasants sharpened; the middle peasantry vacillated. On May 13, 1918, the All-Russian CEC and the Sovnarkom issued the decree On Granting the People’s Commissar for Foodstuffs Extraordinary Powers for the Struggle Against the Rural Bourgeoisie, Which Is Hoarding and Speculating in Grain Supplies. Food appropriation detachments, consisting of workers from such cities as Moscow, Petrograd, Tula, and Ivanovo-Voznesensk, were dispatched to the villages to calculate and appropriate the grain surpluses of the kulaks.
On June 11 the All-Russian CEC issued a decree on organizing committees of the poor, which played a large role in expanding and deepening the socialist revolution in the countryside, in resolving the food question, and in strengthening the dictatorship of the proletariat in the village. Their work was of great political importance in winning over the middle peasants to the side of Soviet power. A total of 50 million desiatinas was taken from the kulaks and handed over to the poor and middle peasants; grain surpluses were appropriated to supply the cities, the Red Army, and the rural poor. An economic and political blow was inflicted on the kulaks. The socioeconomic character of the countryside was changed. The number of kulaks declined, and the process of bringing the peasantry to the middle level was begun on a mass scale. In the fall of 1918 the middle peasant became the central figure of the Soviet countryside.
The Fifth All-Russian Congress of Soviets, held July 4–10, 1918, adopted the first Soviet constitution on July 10: the Constitution of the RSFSR, which consolidated in legal form the great gains of the revolution and the Soviet socialist social and state system. The Constitution of the RSFSR of 1918 served as a model for the constitutions of the other soviet republics. On July 6, during the congress, the Left SR’s, who had been part of the Soviet government from December 1917 through March 1918, raised a rebellion in Moscow; the rebellion was put down the following day.
Civil War and Military Intervention, 1918–20. In league with the foreign imperialists, the Russian exploiting classes that had been overthrown set out to eliminate Soviet power and restore the old bourgeois-pomeshchik order. Offering assistance of every kind to the domestic counterrevolution, the American, British, French, German, and Japanese governments undertook military intervention. British, American, and French troops captured Murmansk in March and Arkhangel’sk in August. In April, Japanese forces landed in Vladivostok, and American, British, and French troops subsequently invaded the Soviet Far East. In early 1918, Rumanian troops occupied Bessarabia. A mutiny in the Czechoslovak Corps, prepared and provoked by the imperialists of the Entente, began on May 25; between May and August, the rebels seized Samara, Kazan, Simbirsk, Ekaterinburg, Cheliabinsk, and other points along the Trans-Siberian Railroad as far as Vladivostok, a series of victories that strengthened the forces of domestic counterrevolution. Kulak rebellions that erupted on the Volga, in the Urals, and in Siberia received support from the vacillating segment of the middle peasantry.
An enormous area, containing millions of people and the richest industrial, agricultural, and raw materials regions of the country, fell into enemy hands. In the captured regions the White Guards reestablished the bourgeois-pomeshchik system, enforced by a terrorist regime. A military dictatorship under the White Guard admiral A. V. Kolchak was established in Siberia in November 1918. British troops invaded Transcaspian Oblast and Azerbaijan, where, together with the bourgeois-nationalist counterrevolution, they overthrew Soviet power. By early 1918, Generals M. V. Alekseev, L. G. Kornilov, and A. I. Denikin had formed the Volunteer Army in the Northern Caucasus. German troops, already in control of Poland, Finland, the Baltic region, and Byelorussia, occupied the Ukraine and, in violation of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, invaded the RSFSR. The Germans captured the Crimea, the Oblast of the Don Host, and Rostov-on-Don and, along with Turkish units, entered Transcaucasia.
A series of anti-Soviet conspiracies and rebellions was organized in Moscow, Petrograd, and the cities of the Volga Region. The SR’s tried to assassinate Lenin on Aug. 30, 1918, and carried out several other terrorist acts. Without the direct participation of the Entente countries in the Civil War and without the political and financial aid they gave to the Russian counterrevolution, the war would not have assumed such dimensions, nor would it have been so long and bloody. In the summer of 1918, three-fourths of the country was in the hands of the interventionists and White Guards. The Soviet republic found itself encircled by a ring of military fronts; it had become a besieged fortress.
The Communist Party and the Soviet government mobilized all the resources at their disposal to repulse the enemy. They put economic, cultural, and political life on a war footing and turned the country into a united military camp. Lenin put forth the slogan “Everything for the front!” The building of a mass regular Red Army began. The Eastern Front, at that time the main front of the republic, was formed in June 1918, followed by the Southern and Northern fronts in September. The government established the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic and the post of commander in chief, held by I. I. Vatsetis (J. Vatsetis) beginning in early September. The Order of the Red Banner was instituted in September. The highest military-political and military-economic body, the Council of Workers’ and Peasants’ Defense, headed by Lenin, was formed on Nov. 30,1918.
The country put every effort into increasing the production of armaments and ammunition: 5 million cartridges were produced in August, and 19 million cartridges in December. About half of the members of the Communist Party and the Komsomol, which was founded at the first Congress of Workers’ and Peasants’ Youth Leagues (Oct. 29-Nov. 4,1918), went off to the front. The Red Army’s Communists, Komsomol members, and commissars played an enormous role in carrying out political education, increasing combat readiness, and strengthening discipline.
By the second half of 1918 the first major victories over the interventionists and White Guards had been achieved. After fierce fighting, troops of the Eastern Front liberated Kazan and Simbirsk in September and Samara in October. In August and October a group of forces of the Southern Front beat back two offensives by P. N. Krasnov’s White Cossack armies against Tsaritsyn. (The group, commanded by K. E. Voroshilov, became the Tenth Army in early October.) In September, troops of the Northern Front halted an enemy offensive against Kotlas and Vologda.
In November 1918, World War I concluded with the defeat of Germany and its allies. A bourgeois democratic revolution overthrew the monarchy in Germany. Throughout the world, a movement of working people in support of Soviet Russia developed on a broad scale. On Nov. 13, 1918, the All-Russian CEC abrogated the extortionate Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. In late December 1918 and early January 1919 the German aggressors were driven out of the Ukraine, Byelorussia, and the Baltic region. The formation of the Byelorussian SSR was proclaimed on Jan. 1, 1919. Soviet power was restored in Estonia on Nov. 29, 1918, and in Latvia on December 17; it was established in Lithuania on December 16.
After the world war the Entente countries stepped up their intervention against the Soviet republic. In the southern Ukraine and in Transcaucasia, German troops were replaced by Anglo-French units, which in November and December landed in Odessa, Sevastopol’, Nikolaev, Kherson, Novorossiisk, and Batumi. The Entente imposed a blockade against Soviet Russia. Kolchak’s White Guard army stepped up its military operations in December 1918, capturing Perm’, but Soviet troops halted Kolchak’s offensive by taking Ufa. Orenburg and Ural’sk were liberated in January 1919. Active underground work by Communists on the ships of the French squadron on the Black Sea helped spark a sailors’ mutiny in April. The French were forced to leave Nikolaev and Kherson in March, and in April they abandoned Odessa and Sevastopol’. British troops were evacuated from Transcaspia in April. The Entente’s plans of smashing the Soviet republic with their own forces collapsed.
The domestic situation of the Soviet state remained perilous in 1919. Shortages of food, weapons, and equipment made it difficult to expand the army. The surplus appropriation system was introduced by the Soviet government in order to mobilize all manpower and matériel for use at the front, in the struggle against famine, and in the rear; in 1918 and 1919 several other emergency political measures, known collectively as War Communism, were carried out.
The resolutions of the Eighth Congress of the RCP(B), held in March 1919, were extremely important in organizing the victory over the foe. The congress adopted a new party program, drafted under the guidance of Lenin. The first congress of Communist parties, which was convened in Moscow in March, established the Communist International (Comintern). The founding of the Comintern was a great victory of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism.
The party program adopted by the Eighth Congress of the RCP(B) defined the paths toward the construction of a socialist society. The congress set forth a new line with respect to the middle peasantry: the party would forge a solid alliance between the working class and the middle peasants; at the same time, it would continue to rely on the support of the poor peasants and would wage a struggle against the kulaks. The congress’s rebuff of the Military Opposition, which in essence objected to the creation of a regular army, was of major importance for building the Soviet armed forces.
After Sverdlov’s death, M. I. Kalinin was elected chairman of the All-Russian CEC on Mar. 30, 1919, on Lenin’s recommendation.
In the spring of 1919 the military dictatorship of the bourgeois-pomeshchik counterrevolution, which had regrouped its forces, continued to dominate large regions of the country. As before, all White Guard troops in Siberia and the Urals were united under Kolchak, whom the Entente recognized as commander in chief and “supreme ruler of Russia.” In the south, General Denikin led the Armed Forces of the South of Russia. In the northwest, General N. N. Iudenich formed the Northwestern Volunteer Army in Estonia. E. K. Miller organized White Guard forces in the north. By the spring of 1919 the total strength of the anti-Soviet and Entente forces massed against the Red Army on all fronts was about 1 million officers and men. The ruling circles of various countries, notably Great Britain, the USA, Japan, and France, supplied the White Guard armies with weapons, ammunition, and uniforms.
In March 1919, Kolchak’s army launched an offensive along the entire Eastern Front. By early April it was in possession of the Urals and was advancing toward the middle Volga, where it threatened to take Kazan. The situation was dangerous in the extreme. Large numbers of reinforcements—some 70,000 men, including about 7,500 Communists—were sent to the Red Army’s Eastern Front. The trade unions and the Russian Communist League of Youth carried out several mobilizations.
The working class labored selflessly under difficult conditions to produce arms and ammunition. The Communist subbotniki (days on which persons voluntarily contribute unpaid labor), which were initiated on Apr. 12, 1919, by the Communist workers of the Moskva-Sortirovochnaia depot, manifested the lofty consciousness of the workers. Lenin called the first Communist subbotniki a great beginning.
A military and political alliance of the soviet republics developed during the fierce struggle against the interventionists and White Guards. In June 1919 the RSFSR, the Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, and Byelorussia combined their military and economic efforts in the struggle against foreign and domestic enemies. The Central Committee of the RCP(B) and the Council of Workers’ and Peasants’ Defense, which was headed by Lenin, directed the efforts of the party and people to organize the rout of the enemy. The “Theses of the Central Committee of the RCP(B) on the Situation on the Eastern Front,” written by Lenin on Apr. 11, 1919, set forth a program to mobilize manpower for the struggle against Kolchak’s armies. The Southern Group of Forces (commander, M. V. Frunze) of the Eastern Front went over to a counteroffensive and in May and June smashed the main enemy grouping of forces; in the second half of 1919 the troops of the Eastern Front, aided by partisans, cleared the enemy out of the Urals and a substantial part of Siberia. Kolchak’s forces were decisively defeated by the end of 1919.
At the height of the struggle on the Eastern Front, the enemy launched an offensive against Petrograd. White Guard units and interventionists captured Narva in January, Riga in May, and Vilnius in April; in early June 1919 they approached Petrograd. At this time, counterrevolutionary mutinies broke out at two forts on the Gulf of Finland: Krasnaia Gorka and Seraia Loshad’. On May 22 the appeal “To the Defense of Petrograd” was published by the Central Committee of the RCP(B); it played an important role in mobilizing forces to defend the city. The rebellions at the forts were put down. In August, Iudenich’s army was pushed back into Estonia, and White Finn detachments were driven back to the Finnish border. At the same time, Denikin’s army, having captured the Northern Caucasus and a large part of the Oblast of the Don Host, reached the Donbas. At the end of July it took Kharkov and Tsaritsyn. After Denikin announced a march on Moscow, the principal military operations took place in the south.
The plenum of the Central Committee of the RCP(B) held on July 3 and 4, 1919, stated that the main task was to “repulse Denikin’s onslaught and to defeat him, without checking the Red Army’s victorious advance into the Urals and Siberia” ((Lenin, Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 39, p. 45). On July 9 the Central Committee of the RCP(B) sent a letter, written by Lenin, to party organizations, entitled “All Out for the Fight Against Denikin!” In July 1919, S. S. Kamenev was appointed commander in chief of the Red Army, and Frunze was named commander of the Eastern Front. The Southern Front received reinforcements. The enemy advanced rapidly to the center of the country: it captured Kursk, Voronezh, and Orel on the central axis in September and October and approached Tula, posing a threat to Moscow. At the same time, Iudenich’s army, which had been reformed, reached the Pulkovo Hills outside Petrograd, and White Poles occupied Minsk.
The Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP(B) issued a directive stating that all military operations should be conducted with the security of the Moscow-Tula region as the principal objective and the security of Petrograd as the secondary objective. A special commission, headed by Lenin, was given responsibility for seeing that the directive was carried out. The Soviet government and the Central Committee of the RCP(B) took measures to repulse and smash the enemy. The Southern Front was replaced by two fronts—the Southern and Southeastern, on both of which Soviet troops gained numerical and technological superiority.
The production of arms and ammunition was stepped up: in 1919 the army received more than 1 million rifles, 6,000 machine guns, 540 artillery pieces, 357 million cartridges, and 184,000 shells. A partisan struggle developed in the White Guard rear; it was led by underground Bolshevik organizations and revolutionary committees. In the autumn of 1919, 30,000 Communists and 10,000 Komsomol members swelled the ranks of the Red Army. Party Week—a drive to attract large numbers of workers and peasants to the RCP(B)—was held in accordance with a resolution of the Central Committee of the RCP(B); during the week, more than 200,000 persons in the 38 central provinces alone joined the RCP(B). The extensive explanatory work carried out by the party organization and Soviet agencies and the harsh lessons of the Civil War had a positive effect on the mood of the middle peasantry.
A counteroffensive by Soviet troops on the Southern Front, commanded by A. I. Egorov, began in October 1919. Denikin’s armies were soundly defeated at Orel and Voronezh. In December the counteroffensive of the Southern Front, aided by the troops of the Southeastern Front under V. I. Shorin, developed into a general offensive of two fronts. Kharkov was liberated on December 12 and Kiev on December 16. The First Horse Cavalry Army, established in November 1919 and commanded by S. M. Budennyi, played a major role in the rout and pursuit of the retreating White Guard armies. On Jan. 9 and 10, 1920, the Red Army liberated Rostov-on-Don. Denikin’s army suffered a final crushing defeat in early 1920 in the southern Ukraine, where Odessa was liberated on February 7, and in the Northern Caucasus, where Soviet forces took Novorossiisk on March 27. About 40,000 White Guards fled to the Crimea. Soviet power was reestablished in the Ukraine.
Soviet troops smashed Iudenich’s army at Petrograd in October and November 1919 and routed White Guard units in the north in early 1920: Arkhangel’sk was liberated on February 21 and Murmansk on March 7. In Siberia, Omsk was liberated on Nov. 14, 1919, Novonikolaevsk on December 14, Krasnoiarsk on Jan. 6, 1920, and Irkutsk on March 7. The Soviet republic obtained a temporary respite from war.
The Seventh All-Russian Congress of Soviets, held in December 1919, devoted particular attention to questions of peaceful socialist construction. The Ninth Congress of the RCP(B), held from Mar. 29 to Apr. 5, 1920, emphasized in the resolution On the Immediate Tasks of Economic Construction that the main condition for the economic revival of the country was the implementation of a unified economic plan based on the electrification of the country. (In February 1920 the State Commission for the Electrification of Russia, or GOELRO, whose chairman was G. M. Krzhizhanovskii, had been formed on Lenin’s initiative.)
The imperialists put an end to the respite. In April 1920 the Soviet republic was attacked by bourgeois-pomeshchik Poland and the White Guard army of P. N. Wrangel, whose base of operations was located in the Crimea. Wrangel was proclaimed commander in chief and “ruler” of the South of Russia on April 4, replacing Denikin. Polish troops commanded by J. Pilsudski invaded the Ukraine and on May 6 captured Kiev. In June, Wrangel’s units moved to the offensive; by capturing Northern Tavrida, they posed a threat to the Donbas.
On May 23, 1920, the Central Committee of the RCP(B) published the theses “The Polish Front and Our Tasks.” Reinforcements, including the First Horse Cavalry Army, were dispatched to the Western Front, which was commanded by M. N. Tukha-chevskii and the Southwestern Front, which was commanded by Egorov. The troops of the Western Front shifted to the offensive in mid-May, and those of the Southwestern Front in early June. The Polish armies began to fall back. Kiev was liberated on June 12. Beginning in early July, the main strikes were delivered by the troops of the Western Front. Minsk was liberated on July 11. After driving the White Poles out of the Ukraine and Byelorussia, Soviet troops entered Polish territory. The First Horse Cavalry Army approached Lwów, and the troops of the Western Front approached Warsaw.
Meanwhile, with the aid of the Entente countries and by means of a demagogic nationalistic campaign, Pilsudski organized and equipped a large army. Shifting to the offensive, he exploited errors of the Soviet command and drove the Red Army back from Warsaw. Lacking the forces to continue the war, however, Poland agreed to conclude a peace treaty. Preliminary terms were signed in Riga on Oct. 12, 1920, and military operations ceased. Under the Treaty of Riga, signed on Mar. 18, 1921, Western Byelorussia and the Western Ukraine went to Poland.
At the end of October 1920, the troops of the Southern Front, commanded by Frunze, defeated Wrangel’s army in Northern Tavrida. Between November 7 and 11, Soviet units took the formidable Perekop and Chongar fortifications by storm; by November 17 they had liberated the Crimea. By 1921 the main forces of the interventionists and White Guard had been utterly defeated.
The Leninist nationalities policy of Soviet power ensured the active participation of all the peoples of the country, led by the Russian working class, in the struggle against the White Guards and interventionists. The Russian workers and peasants offered fraternal aid to the other peoples of Russia in driving the enemy from their territories. Soviet power was reestablished in the liberated regions of Middle Asia and Kazakhstan. The Turkestan ASSR was proclaimed Apr. 30, 1918, the Khorezm People’s Soviet Republic was formed on Apr. 26, 1920, and the Bukhara People’s Soviet Republic was established on Oct. 8, 1920. The Russian people and the Red Army went to the aid of the Azerbaijani, Armenian, and Georgian peoples and joined with them to liberate all Transcaucasia from the interventionists, Musavatists, Dashnaks, and Mensheviks. In the course of the liberation, the Azerbaijan SSR was formed on Apr. 28, 1920, the Armenian SSR on Nov. 29, 1920, and the Georgian SSR on Feb. 25, 1921. In January 1920 the Entente countries were forced to lift the blockade against Soviet Russia. A peace treaty was signed with Estonia on Feb. 2, 1920, with Lithuania on July 12, and with Latvia on August 11; in the three countries the interventionists and White Guards had restored bourgeois power in 1919 and 1920. A treaty with Finland was concluded on Oct. 14,1920.
In the Far East the war dragged on until the fall of 1922. In 1920, British and American units were forced to withdraw from the Far East, but Japanese forces remained until October 1922. In order to avert a possible war with Japan, the Far East Republic was formed on Apr. 6, 1920. Although bourgeois democratic in form, it essentially adhered to Soviet policies. With the aid of the RSFSR, the Far East Republic established its own people’s revolutionary army, which went on the offensive and, supported by partisans, took Vladivostok on Oct. 25,1922. The Japanese were driven out of the Far East, with the exception of Sakhalin. On Nov. 15, 1922, the Far East Republic was dissolved, and its territory became part of the RSFSR.
The victory of the Soviet people and the Red Army and Navy over the combined forces of international imperialism and domestic bourgeois-pomeshchik counterrevolution was a major event in world history; it secured the gains of the October Socialist Revolution. The Communist Party played a crucial role by organizing and inspiring the Soviet people. The Russian working class bore the brunt of the Civil War. The Communist Party and the Soviet government rallied all the peoples of the country in the struggle against the interventionists and White Guards and succeeded in creating a regular Red Army. In addition they trained and brought forward from the people such heroes and commanders of the Civil War as V. K. Bliukher, Budennyi, V. I. Chapaev, Dybenko, J. Fabriciuss, I. F. Fed’ko, Frunze, O. I. Gorodovikov, I. E. Iakir, G. I. Kotovskii, S. G. Lazo, A. Ia. Parkhomenko, V. M. Primakov, N. A. Shchors, Tukhachevskii, I. P. Uborevich, and S. S. Vostretsov. The Communist Party and Soviet government enlisted such experienced military specialists as M. D. Bonch-Bruevich, Egorov, V. M. Gittis, Kamenev, A. I. Kork, B. M. Shaposhnikov, Shorin, and Vatsetis to help build the army of the Soviet state.
The successes of the Soviet troops could not have been achieved without the political work conducted among the troops by military commissars and political workers. Leading party figures who directed political work in the army included Antonov-Ovseenko, Bubnov, Dzerzhinskii, S. I. Gusev, Kalinin, S. M. Kirov, Kosior, N. K. Krupskaia, V. V. Kuibyshev, K. A. Mekhonoshin, A. F. Miasnikov, A. I. Mikoyan, G. K. Ordzhonikidze, G. I. Petrovskii, Podvoiskii, P. P. Postyshev, Stalin, Voroshilov, and R. S. Zemliachka. Communists and Komsomol members displayed unparalleled determination, heroism, and devotion to the cause of the revolution; their example was an inspiration to the nonparty masses. About 50,000 Communists perished in battle.
Lenin wrote, “It was only because of the Party’s vigilance and its strict discipline, because the authority of the Party united all government departments and institutions, because the slogans issued by the Central Committee were adopted by tens, hundreds, thousands and finally millions of people as one man, because incredible sacrifices were made—it was only because of all this that the miracle which occurred was made possible. It was only because of all this that we were able to win in spite of the campaigns of the imperialists of the Entente and of the whole world having been repeated twice, thrice and even four times” (ibid., vol. 40, p. 240).
The just nature of Soviet Russia’s war and the country’s consistent peaceful internationalist policy aroused ardent support for the Soviet cause among the working people of many capitalist countries, who rallied round the slogan “Hands off Russia!” Tens of thousands of internationalist soldiers, including Poles, Czechs, Hungarians, and Serbs, fought in the Red Army as volunteers.
The victory of the Soviet republic in the Civil War consolidated the gains of the October Revolution and contributed to an upsurge in the world communist and national liberation movements. It provided the Soviet republic with the necessary conditions for socialist construction and made possible peaceful coexistence with the capitalist countries.
Socialist construction from 1921 to 1941.REBUILDING THE NATIONAL ECONOMY, 1921–25. The transition to the peaceful construction of socialism took place in difficult international circumstances. The ruling circles of the imperialist countries developed plans for renewed armed intervention. The existence of other tendencies, however, was manifested in the desire of some countries to establish trade relations with Soviet Russia. As a result of the victory in the Civil War over the forces of domestic and external counterrevolution, Soviet power was preserved and strengthened, important political, socioeconomic, and cultural measures were implemented, and the class structure of society changed. The country’s situation was grave, however. About 8 million persons, including 1 million members of the Red Army, had perished on the fronts and at the rear from famine, epidemics, or White Guard and interventionist terror. Hundreds of large factories had been destroyed. According to incomplete data, the damage inflicted on the national economy totaled about 39 billion gold rubles. Industrial output in 1920 was only 13.8 percent—that is, about one-seventh—of the output in 1913; pig iron output was 3 percent of the prewar level, steel output 5 percent, coal output 30 percent, and petroleum output 42 percent. In 1913 textile mills turned out 22 times more fabric than in 1921. Fuel and raw materials were in short supply, and the majority of plants stood idle.
The economic ties between different regions of the country and between city and countryside had been disrupted. Transportation was in a state of total collapse: in 1920 the freight turnover of railroads was 17 percent of the turnover in 1913. The population, particularly in the cities, had lived in a state of semistarvation for several years; shoes, clothing, and medicines were needed desperately. The city streets were unlit, urban transportation—the streetcar—barely functioned, and buildings were rarely heated. The monetary system was in dissaray: in mid-1921 the ruble was worth 1/800 of the 1918 ruble and 1/13,000 of the 1913 ruble.
Hunger, ruin, and fatigue engendered discontent among segments of the working class, which had declined substantially in size and had changed in composition. The finest trained workers had been sent to the front or assigned to work in the Soviet state apparatus. Some workers had gone off to the countryside, and others had become engaged in cottage industry. The working class had become dispersed, and many of its members had lost their class identity. The class base of the Soviet state had weakened, a situation that represented a clear danger to the dictatorship of the proletariat. The demobilization of the army also gave rise to serious problems, associated primarily with finding employment for former members of the Red Army.
Agriculture too had been devastated: sown areas had shrunk, yields had fallen, and the livestock population had declined. Agricultural output fell by 33 percent between 1913 and 1920, and in 1920 the countryside supplied the cities with only one-third the food it had provided in 1913. The grain harvest was slightly more than half the prewar level, and the harvest of sugar beets and cotton fell by factors of 13 and 27, respectively, over the same period. There was a serious shortage of agricultural implements in the villages. Agriculture could supply neither the workers and army with food nor light industry with raw materials. Industry, in turn, could not give the peasantry such essential consumer products as kerosene, salt, sugar, soap, and textiles.
The surplus appropriation system and the prohibition of free trade reduced the peasantry’s stake in the development of agricultural production. The retention of the surplus appropriation system, which had played an important role during the war, gave rise to extreme discontent among the peasants, who consequently rebelled. The surplus appropriation system, Lenin noted, “proved to be the main cause of the profound economic and political crisis that we experienced in the spring of 1921” (ibid., vol. 44, p. 159). The alliance of the working class and peasantry was threatened. A new system of economic measures was needed, one that would foster an upsurge in agriculture, create an incentive for increased output of agricultural products and raw materials, and, under the new conditions, strengthen the alliance of the working class and the toiling peasantry.
Most workers and poor peasants believed in the victory of socialism and sought to engage in active, creative work, despite the demoralizing effect produced by the devastation wrought in industry, transportation, and agriculture. By relying on the support of the poor peasants and resolutely implementing a policy of alliance with the middle peasantry, the party was able to win the toiling peasantry over to the side of the proletariat. The struggle against the common foe in the Civil War of 1918–20 united “the working class and the peasantry absolutely, unreservedly and irrevocably” (ibid., vol. 43, p. 302). These were the class forces with a vital interest in the economic revival of the country.
The foreign and domestic enemies of the Soviet state attempted to exploit the country’s perilous economic and political situation for counterrevolutionary ends. The White Guards, SR’s, and Mensheviks, supported by the forces of international reaction, organized anti-Soviet activity in various parts of the country in the second half of 1920 and in 1921, including the Antonov Revolt in Tambov Province, kulak rebellions in the Volga Region, the Northern Caucasus, and Western Siberia, pogroms and looting carried out by the bands of S. N. Bulak-Balakhovich in Byelorussia, and the Kronstadt Anti-Soviet Rebellion of 1921. Bands led by N. I. Makhno and S. V. Petliura opposed Soviet power in the Ukraine, and the Basmachi were active in Middle Asia. The outlaws dealt savagely with party and Soviet workers, pillaged Soviet farms, institutions, and enterprises, blew up railroad bridges and tracks, and cut off the delivery of grain to the central regions of the country. The Cheka played an important role in the struggle against the anti-Soviet activity.
Of great importance during the transition to peaceful construction was the Eighth All-Russian Congress of Soviets (Dec. 22–29, 1920), which discussed how to rebuild industry and agriculture and outlined urgent measures for putting transportation in order. The congress approved the State Plan for the Electrification of Russia (GOELRO plan). With industrial output projected to reach a level exceeding the 1913 figure by a factor of 1.8–2.0, the plan called for an increase in the capacity of regional electric power plants to a level 9.3 times greater than in 1913 and for the construction of 30 large electric power plants, with a total capacity of 1.75 million kilowatts, over a period of ten to 15 years. The first long-term plan of the Soviet state, the GOELRO plan was a specific program for rebuilding the national economy on the basis of modern technology. Lenin stated that it was the party’s second program, because “Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country” (ibid., vol. 42, p. 159). The GOELRO plan became state law. On Dec. 29, 1920, the Eighth Congress ratified a statute for the Council of Labor and Defense, which had been formed in April 1920 from the Council of Workers’ and Peasants’ Defense and was headed by Lenin. The congress instituted the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.
The Third Congress of the Russian Communist League of Youth (more than 400,000 members) was held in October 1920; it was addressed by Lenin, who defined in his speech “The Tasks of the Youth Leagues” a program for the Komsomol with respect to the communist education of young people and their participation in creating a new society.
In mobilizing the working people to rebuild the economy, the party devoted serious attention to the reorganization of trade union work. In order to strengthen the trade unions (more than 6.8 million members in late 1920), step up their activities, and develop the creative initiative of all working people, the party considered it essential to shift to a system of thoroughgoing democracy in trade union organizations.
The Trotskyists vehemently opposed a reorganization of trade union work. In late 1920 they initiated the trade union controversy, presenting an antiparty plan under which the trade unions would become part of the state and would be subject to bureaucratic control and constraint. The Workers’ Opposition group, whose principal figures were A. G. Shliapnikov and A. M. Kolontai, proposed an anarchosyndicalist transfer of the management of the national economy to the trade unions. Also subjected to sharp criticism during the controversy were the Democratic Centralists (notably T. V. Sapronov), who opposed one-man management and firm discipline in production, and Bukharin’s “buffer” group, which took an essentially Trotskyist position on the role and tasks of the trade unions.
Differences over the role of the trade unions in Soviet society were in fact differences over what the basic policies of the RCP(B) should be during the period of peaceful construction, over the party’s relation to the nonparty masses in general, and over methods for drawing the working people into the construction of socialism. Lenin showed that although the trade unions were among the most important links between the RCP(B) and the masses, the guiding force in the Soviet state could be only the Communist Party, and that the dictatorship of the proletariat was impossible save under the leadership of the Communist Party.
The party adopted the Leninist platform on trade unions and condemned the views of the opposition groups. Lenin formulated the essence of his platform in the following terms: the trade unions constitute “an organisation designed to draw in and train; it is, in fact, a school: a school of administration, a school of economic management, a school of communism” (ibid., p. 203).
The existing situation demanded changes in the relations between industry and agriculture and between the working class and the peasantry. The military-political alliance of the workers and peasants had exhausted itself. The party faced the task of strengthening the alliance on an economic foundation. In March 1921 the Tenth Congress of the RCP(B) responded to Lenin’s initiative by adopting a resolution replacing the surplus appropriation system with a tax in kind. The country made an abrupt historical turn from War Communism to the New Economic Policy (NEP).
Initially, NEP led to an increase in the role played by capitalist elements. Private enterprises with no more than 20 workers were declared legal; subsequently, large enterprises were also permitted. A considerable number of small enterprises belonging to the state were leased to private individuals, and concessions were granted to foreign companies. Private commerce was permitted: peasants, artisans, craftsmen, and entrepreneurs obtained the right to trade freely under state supervision. Because the dictatorship of the proletariat remained in force, however, and because the key areas of the national economy stayed under the control of Soviet power and became stronger, NEP ensured the victory of socialist over capitalist elements.
NEP was an economic policy designed to overcome capitalist elements and construct a socialist economy while making use of economic levers—the market, trade, money circulation, profit-and-loss accounting, profit, and profitability. Primary attention was devoted to organizing commodity circulation between city and countryside—the basic form of economic contact between the two. Cooperatives were to be of major importance. The implementation of NEP laid a firm foundation for linking socialist industry with the small-scale peasant economy; it provided material incentives for agricultural development and created the conditions for rapidly rebuilding the entire national economy.
The Tenth Congress of the RCP(B) also discussed the national question, which was closely connected with the task of rebuilding the national economy. It devoted much attention to uniting the soviet republics and set the task of eliminating the de facto inequality among peoples. The congress adopted the resolution On Party Unity, which ordered the immediate disbanding of all opposition groups and prohibited the formation of factions within the party. The main theoretical and practical conclusion of the congress was that without the leadership of the party, there could be no dictatorship of the proletariat; ideological and organizational unity was the inviolable law of party life and an essential condition for the party to fulfill its role as the political leader of the toiling masses in the struggle to build a new society.
When the party and the Soviet people set about implementing NEP, there were five socioeconomic structures in the country: the patriarchal peasant economy, which was based on personal labor and was almost entirely a subsistence economy; small-scale commodity production, which was represented primarily by the middle peasants and by artisans who did not employ hired labor; the private capitalist sector, which was represented by the most numerous of the exploiter classes, the kulaks, by the owners of small and medium-sized private industrial enterprises, and by tradesmen; state capitalism (primarily in the form of leases and concessions granted to foreign capitalists), which had not undergone extensive development; and the socialist structure, which included state-owned industrial and commercial enterprises, transportation, the banks, sovkhozes, and producers’ cooperatives. Although the small-scale commodity structure predominated, the socialist structure occupied the key areas of the economy. The task of NEP was to overcome the multiplicity of structures and ensure the complete victory of the socialist structure in all branches of the national economy.
Guided by the resolutions of the Tenth Congress of the RCP(B), the second session of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee ratified on Mar. 21, 1921, the decree On the Substitution of a Tax in Kind for the Surplus Appropriation System. On March 28 the Sovnarkom issued a decree establishing the total tax in kind, payable in food, for 1921–22: it was to amount to no more than 240 million poods, as compared with 423 million poods for 1920–21 under the surplus appropriation system. Free trade in grain and feed-grain products was to be permitted. The replacement of surplus appropriations with a tax in kind and the decision to allow free trade in surplus commodities gave the peasantry an interest in expanding the sown area of cereal and industrial crops, in raising productivity, and in increasing the livestock population. Between April and July 1921 the Sovnarkom promulgated several other decrees associated with the introduction of NEP, including decrees dealing with consumers’ cooperatives, the introduction of free trade, and the conclusion of agreements on concessions with capitalist states or independent groups of entrepreneurs.
With the beginning of NEP, measures on restructuring industry were implemented: industry was organized into trusts, and a shift was made to profit-and-loss accounting. A monetary reform was carried out, stabilizing the exchange rate of the ruble. The government began issuing chervontsy—a special series of banknotes based on the 10-ruble note—backed by gold and goods; it also began minting silver and copper coins. The old currency was withdrawn from circulation. These measures strengthened money circulation. Universal labor conscription and labor mobilizations were abolished, and the labor armies were eliminated. The wage system was reconstructed; piecework came into wide use, giving workers a material interest in increasing labor productivity. Rationing was abolished.
Government agencies were improved, and their role in economic and cultural construction enhanced. In early 1922, at the initiative of the Communist Party, the All-Russian CEC adopted major laws that strengthened the legal status of the soviets in the outlying areas and defined more clearly their basic rights and obligations. With the transition to peaceful economic construction, it became more important to direct the national economy in a planned fashion. To this end, a scientific economics center was created under the Council of Labor and Defense on Feb. 22, 1921—the State Planning Commission (Gosplan), headed by Krzhizhanovskii. In 1922 and 1923, measures were adopted to strengthen revolutionary legality, and a unified judicial system was created, comprising the people’s court, provincial court, and supreme court. Basic law codes were promulgated, including labor, land, and civil codes.
In 1921 the country was hit by severe drought and crop failures. Famine gripped an area with a population of some 35 million. The party and government took steps to combat hunger and epidemics, and much aid was given to the starving. The Soviet people, overcoming incredible difficulties and deprivation, were able to cope with the famine. The peasants, even those in the affected regions, successfully completed the autumn planting in 1921.
NEP created the necessary conditions for rebuilding the national economy and constructing socialism. Implementation of the GOELRO plan commenced. Electric power plants, large for the time, were constructed: the Volhov, Balakhna, and Shatura plants. The Kashira Electric Power Plant went into operation in May 1922. The rebirth of heavy industry proceeded slowly. The initial results of NEP were summed up by the Ninth All-Russian Congress of Soviets in December 1921 and the Eleventh Congress of the RCP(B) in March and April 1922.
Evaluating the results and defining the tasks of the party and state for the upcoming period, Lenin pointed out the NEP presumed a bitter class struggle between socialism and capitalism, in which the question “Who will win?” would be settled. Lenin emphasized that “this is ... if not the last, then nearly the last, desperate, furious, life-and-death struggle between capitalism and communism” (ibid., vol. 45, p. 95). He noted that the Russian working class and its vanguard, the Communist Party, had at their disposal both the political and economic means for the achievement of victory and that everything necessary to transform technologically and economically backward Russia into an advanced socialist state was available. NEP was intended to encompass the entire transitional period from capitalism to socialism, during which the foundation for a socialist economy would be constructed.
The state association of soviet socialist republics played an important role in socialist construction. The voluntary unification of the sovereign soviet republics into a single multinational socialist state union was dictated by the course of their political, economic, and cultural development and was prepared for in practice through the implementation of the Leninist nationalities policy. The joint struggle of the peoples of the soviet republics against foreign and domestic enemies showed that the treaty relations among them, which had been established during the first years of Soviet power, were inadequate for rebuilding the economy and carrying out further construction of socialism or for defending the state independence and integrity of Soviet power. Only by unifying all the soviet republics into a single economic whole could the national economy successfully Be developed. Also of great importance were the economic division of labor and the interdependence that had taken shape over time among various regions of the country; close economic ties had resulted. The threat of military intervention by the imperialist states demanded a unified foreign policy and the strengthening of the country’s defense capabilities.
The cooperation of the republics in a single union was particularly important for those non-Russian peoples who had yet to travel the path from precapitalist economic forms to socialism. The formation of the USSR followed naturally from the existence of the socialist structure in the economy and from the very nature of Soviet power, which was international in essence.
A mass movement of working people for unification in a single, united state developed in all the republics in 1922. The Transcaucasian Federation, which was proclaimed in March 1922, was formally constituted as the Transcaucasian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic (Transcaucasian SFSR) in December 1922. The Central Committee of the party discussed and worked out the forms of unification of the republics. Stalin, who had become general secretary of the party’s Central Committee in April 1922, proposed autonomization, under which independent soviet republics would join the RSFSR with the rights of autonomous republics; he was supported by certain other party workers. The plan was rejected initially by Lenin and subsequently by the October plenum of the Central Committee of the RCP(B) in 1922.
Lenin worked out an essentially different form for unifying the independent republics. He proposed establishing a new state formation, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which would comprise the soviet republics and the RSFSR; all would enjoy equal status. Congresses of soviets of the Ukrainian SSR, Byelorussian SSR, and Transcaucasian SFSR held in December 1922 and the Tenth All-Russian Congress of Soviets recognized that it was time to unify the soviet republics into a single state. The First Congress of Soviets of the USSR, which opened in Moscow on Dec. 30, 1922, ratified the Declaration on the Establishment of the USSR. The declaration formulated the basic principles for unifying the republics—the republics entered voluntarily and as equal partners into the USSR and were free to secede from the union—and defined a procedure for admitting new soviet socialist republics. The congress reviewed and ratified the Treaty on the Formation of the USSR. Initially, the USSR included the RSFSR, Ukrainian SSR, Byelorussian SSR, and Transcaucasian SFSR.
The formation of the USSR was a triumph of the Leninist nationalities policy and an event of major significance in world history. It was made possible by the victory of the October Revolution, the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the creation of the socialist structure in the economy. The First Congress of Soviets elected the supreme governing body of the USSR, the Central Executive Committee of the USSR (chairmen, Kalinin, Petrovskii, N. N. Narimanov, and A. G. Cherviakov). The executive agency of the USSR, the Sovnarkom of the USSR, was formed at the second session of the Central Executive Committee; it was headed by Lenin.
The unification of material and labor resources in a single state was enormously important for successful socialist construction. Speaking in November 1922 at a plenum of the Moscow soviet and summing up the results of the first five years of Soviet power, Lenin expressed confidence that “NEP Russia will become socialist Russia” (ibid., p. 309).
In the fall of 1922, Lenin became gravely ill. During his illness he wrote a number of letters and articles of major importance: “Letter to the Congress,” “Granting Legislative Functions to the State Planning Commission,” “The Question of Nationalities or ’Autonomization,’” “Pages From a Diary,” “On Co-operation,” “Our Revolution,” “How We Should Reorganise the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection,” and “Better Fewer, But Better.” In these works, Lenin summed up the development of Soviet society and pointed out specific ways to build socialism: industrialization of the country, cooperation of peasant farms (collectivization), implementation of a cultural revolution, and strengthening of the socialist state and its armed forces.
The instructions given by Lenin in his last articles and letters provided a basis for the resolutions of the Twelfth Party Congress in April 1923 and for the entire subsequent policy of the party and government. The congress surveyed the two years of NEP and outlined ways to further its implementation. The resolutions of the congress on the national question contained a detailed program of struggle for the elimination of the inherited economic and cultural inequality among the peoples of the USSR.
Despite major achievements in rebuilding the national economy, the country still faced serious difficulties in 1923. There were about 1 million unemployed. Some 4,000 small and medium-sized enterprises in light industry and the food-processing industry, three-fourths of the retail trade, and about half of the wholesale-retail trade were in the hands of private capital. Various hostile forces, notably the “Nepmen” (entrepreneurs and tradesmen) in the cities, the kulaks in the countryside, and remnants of the defeated SR-Menshevik parties, waged a struggle against Soviet power. Economic difficulties were compounded by a crisis in the sale of industrial goods, occasioned by the different rates at which industry and agriculture were recovering, by shortcomings in planning, and by violations of price policies on the part of industrial and commercial agencies. The prices set for industrial goods were high, and prices for agricultural products were extremely low. This discrepancy—the “scissors”—threatened to narrow the base of industrial production, undermine industry, and weaken the alliance between the working class and the peasantry. Measures were adopted to eliminate the emerging difficulties and resolve the crisis of sales: prices for industrial goods were lowered, and a monetary reform carried out between 1922 and 1924 led to the establishment of a stable currency.
Taking advantage of the difficult domestic situation, existing international circumstances, and Lenin’s illness, the Trotskyists launched new attacks on the party. They slandered the work of the Central Committee, demanded the freedom to organize factions and groups, and opposed the lowering of prices on goods; they proposed raising taxes on the peasants, shutting down unprofitable enterprises, even those of great importance to the national economy, and increasing imports of industrial goods from abroad. The Thirteenth Party Conference in January 1924 condemned the Trotskyists, declaring that “in the present opposition we have before us not only an attempt to revise Bolshevism or a direct deviation from Leninism, but clearly also a petit bourgeois deviation” (KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh, 8th ed., vol. 2, 1970, p. 511).
Lenin’s death on Jan. 21, 1924, was a grievous loss for the party and the people. An extraordinary plenum of the Central Committee of the RCP(B) adopted the appeal “To the Party, to All Working People.” The Central Committee also announced the “Lenin enrollment,” a drive to increase party membership; in a short period, more than 240,000 workers joined the party’s ranks. In order to immortalize the memory of Lenin, the Second Congress of Soviets of the USSR, held from Jan. 26 to Feb. 2, 1924, changed the name of Petrograd to Leningrad. The Sixth Congress of the Russian Communist League of Youth in 1924 resolved to name the Komsomol the Lenin Communist League of Youth. Lenin Prizes were established in science and technology in 1925, and the Order of Lenin was instituted on Apr. 6, 1930.
On Jan. 31, 1924, the Second Congress of Soviets of the USSR ratified the first constitution of the USSR. The Declaration of the Establishment of the USSR and the Treaty on the Formation of the USSR, both of which had been adopted by the First All-Union Congress of Soviets in 1922, were made the foundation of the constitution. The Central Executive Committee consisted of two equal chambers: the Union Soviet and the Soviet of Nationalities. A single nationwide citizenship was established: the citizen of any republic was a citizen of the USSR. The constitution ensured the working people of the USSR broad democratic rights and liberties and an active role in the governance of the state. At the same time, the bitter class struggle in the country forced the Soviet state to deny electoral rights to such alien class elements as kulaks, tradesmen, clergymen, and former employees of the police and corps of gendarmes. The Constitution of the USSR, of enormous international and domestic importance, served as a model for the constitutions of the Union republics.
The construction of national states continued. The organization of the Russian Federation as a state was completed: by 1925, it included, in addition to provinces, nine autonomous republics and 15 autonomous oblasts. In 1924 a number of districts of Smolensk, Vitebsk, and Gomel’ provinces inhabited primarily by Byelorussians were transferred from the RSFSR to the Byelorussian SSR, more than doubling the latter’s territory and nearly tripling its population. The Moldavian ASSR was formed within the Ukrainian SSR.
As a result of the national-state demarcation of the Soviet republics of Middle Asia in 1924 and 1925, the peoples of that region were able to create sovereign national states. The Uzbek SSR and Turkmen SSR were formed from oblasts of the Turkestan ASSR and the Bukhara and Khorezm republics that were inhabited by Turkmens and Uzbeks. The Tadzhik ASSR, which became part of the Uzbek SSR, was formed from oblasts of the Turkestan ASSR and the Bukhara Republic that were inhabited by Tadzhiks. Districts inhabited by Kazakhs that had earlier belonged to the Turkestan ASSR were reunited with the Kazakh ASSR. The Kirghiz Autonomous Oblast was formed within the RSFSR from districts that were inhabited by Kirghiz.
The Third Congress of Soviets of the USSR in May 1925 accepted the newly formed Uzbek SSR and Turkmen SSR into the USSR. The congress adopted extremely important resolutions on Soviet construction, industry, and agriculture and on building up the armed forces, for which purpose a military reform was implemented in 1924 and 1925. A new system of troop mobilization and recruitment was established that combined the concepts of a regular army and a territorial militia. A law on compulsory military service was adopted on Sept. 18, 1925. The system of military schools was expanded, and the combat and political training of troops was improved. The Red Army was given new regulations and manuals. In January 1925, Frunze was appointed chairman of the Military Revolutionary Council of the USSR and people’s commissar for military and naval affairs. After Frunze’s death, Voroshilov became people’s commissar on Nov. 6, 1925.
In international relations, the Soviet government consistently implemented a policy of peace, guided by the Leninist principle of the peaceful coexistence of states with different social systems. After the conclusion of its first treaties—with Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Finland—in 1920, the Soviet government signed a series of treaties in 1921, with Iran (February 26), Afghanistan (February 28), Turkey (March 16), and Poland (March 18). That year it concluded trade agreements with Great Britain (March 16), Germany (May 6), Norway (September 2), Austria (December 7), and Italy (December 26); an agreement was signed with Czechoslovakia on July 5, 1922.
The Soviet government was invited to attend the Genoa Conference, which opened on Apr. 10, 1922; the Soviet delegation was headed by the people’s commissar for foreign affairs, G. V. Chicherin. The delegations of the Entente countries demanded that the USSR honor all debts incurred by the tsarist, Provisional, and White Guard governments; that it return to foreign capitalists their factories and mills, which had been nationalized by the Soviet government; and that it abolish the state monopoly on foreign trade. With regard to debts, the Soviet delegation put forward a counterclaim, demanding compensation of 39 billion rubles in gold for the damage wrought by intervention; this was more than twice the amount the imperialists were seeking. The foreign delegations refused to recognize the Soviet counterclaim.
The Soviet government introduced a proposal on immediate, general disarmament but found no support among the representatives of the capitalist countries. During the conference the Soviet delegation successfully carried on diplomatic negotiations with the German delegation; as a result, the RSFSR and Germany signed the Treaty of Rapallo, which established diplomatic relations between the two countries, on Apr. 16, 1922. The Soviet state’s achievement of de jure recognition by Germany, a major capitalist power, was an important diplomatic victory, since it thwarted the attempt by the ruling circles of the Entente countries to create a united front of capitalist powers against the Soviet republics.
In 1923 the international situation of the Soviet Union became more complicated. In an ultimatum issued on May 8, the British foreign minister, G. Curzon, threatened to renew intervention against the USSR. The Soviet diplomat V. V. Vorovskii was assassinated in Switzerland in the same month. Anti-Soviet agitation intensified in various countries, notably the USA, Great Britain, and France. The Soviet government rebuffed the hostile moves of the capitalist states. The governments of the capitalist countries became convinced that in refusing to recognize the USSR they were hurting themselves by retarding the development of trade relations with the USSR.
In 1924 the USSR achieved new foreign policy successes: diplomatic relations were established with Great Britain (February 2–8), Italy (February 7–11), Austria (February 25–29), Norway (February 15-March 10), Sweden (March 15–18), China (May 31), Denmark (June 18), Mexico (August 4), and France (October 28); in 1925 conventions were signed with Japan (February 25) and other countries. In May 1925, Japanese troops were evacuated from northern Sakhalin. The ruling circles of the USA remained unreconciled to the USSR and continued a policy of non-recognition. In August 1924 the Western countries adopted the Dawes Plan, under which German militarism was to be revived. An immediate political outgrowth of the plan was the Locarno Treaties of 1925, which were designed to create an anti-Soviet bloc. Soviet diplomacy was able to weaken considerably the anti-Soviet character of the Locarno Treaties by signing a Soviet-German economic treaty (Oct. 12, 1925), a Soviet-Turkish treaty on friendship and neutrality (Dec. 17, 1925), a Soviet-German treaty on friendship and neutrality (Apr. 24, 1926), a Soviet-Lithuanian treaty on neutrality and mutual nonaggression (Sept. 28, 1926), and a Soviet-Iranian treaty on guarantees and neutrality (1927).
The period of economic recovery essentially concluded in 1925 and 1926. In 1926 the national income reached 103 percent of the 1913 level, as compared with 38 percent in 1921. Industrial output reached 98 percent of the 1913 level. Petroleum production was 90 percent of the 1913 level, coal production 89 percent, pig iron production 52 percent, and steel production 69 percent. In the course of the recovery period, labor productivity in industry rose by a factor of 3.5.
The gross output of agriculture exceeded the 1913 level by 18 percent. In 1926 agriculture provided 630 million poods of marketed grain—that is, grain available for disposal outside the pro ducing unit. Kolkhozes were created; as of July 1, 1926, they included 1 percent of all peasant households. About 25 percent of all peasant farms belonged to some sort of agricultural cooperative. About 10,000 tractors were used in the fields. On the whole, however, the peasant farm remained an individual operation on a semisubsistence level; agriculture was at a low level of mechanization.
The socialist sector accounted for 59.3 percent of the retail trade turnover in 1926. The financial situation of the working people was improving. The wages of industrial workers reached 94 percent of the prewar level in 1925. In some industries the figure was even higher; for example, wages were 16 percent higher than the prewar level in the textile industry, 20 percent higher in the chemical industry, and 46 percent higher in the food-processing industry. The number of blue-collar and white-collar workers in industry reached 2.5 million by the end of 1925, or 91 percent of the prewar figure; unemployment was still widespread, however.
Soviet science and culture achieved major successes. In the period between the promulgation of the decree On the Liquidation of Illiteracy Among the Population of the RSFSR (Dec. 26, 1919) and the All-Russian Congress on the Liquidation of Illiteracy (February 1922), 5 million people were taught to read and write. When the number of illiterates between the ages of 11 and 40 was counted in 1923, it was found that 27 million people would have to be taught to read and write. That year, the Down with Illiteracy Society, a voluntary organization, was formed; Krupskaia became one of its leaders. An upsurge in the development of public education began in 1924. The number of students in higher educational institutions reached 162,000 in 1925, as compared with 112,000 in 1913. A fundamental restructuring of science, literature, and art took place. On the ideological front, a struggle of militant materialism against idealism and metaphysics developed, and scholars mastered Marxist-Leninist science. Lenin’s rich written legacy was published.
The toiling masses became politically more active as the material and cultural level of the workers and peasants improved. The alliance of the working class and peasantry was consolidated, the dictatorship of the proletariat was strengthened, and the authority and influence of the Communist Party grew among the masses as the Soviet Union’s prestige in the international arena rose.
SOCIALIST INDUSTRIALIZATION OF THE COUNTRY; COLLECTIVIZATION OF AGRICULTURE; THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION; VICTORY AND CONSOLIDATION OF SOCIALISM (1926–41). The national economy reached the prewar level, which was, however, that of a technologically and economically backward country. The USSR ranked fifth in the world and fourth in Europe in industrial output. It had no tractor, automotive, aircraft, or machine tool industry, nor did it have a developed chemical industry. Agriculture provided about two-thirds of the output of the national economy, and industry slightly more than one-third. Guided by Lenin’s teaching on the development of large scale industry and the electrification of the country by all possible means, the Communist Party set the task of creating a heavy industry, which would provide a firm base for the entire national economy and defense of the USSR and ensure a steady growth in the prosperity of the working people.
The party’s policy of industrialization of the country was opposed by the Trotskyists, by members of the Trotskyist-Zinovievist Antiparty Bloc, and subsequently, by right-wing opportunists who did not believe that socialism could triumph in a single country.
At the Fourteenth Congress of the ACP(B) in December 1925, the Communist Party set the task of carrying out the socialist industrialization of the USSR, of creating a material and technical basis for socialism, and of turning the country into a socialist power that would be economically independent of the capitalist states. The country had to provide the old mills and factories with new equipment; create new industries, build metallurgical, machine-building, machine tool, automotive, tractor, and chemical plants; organize the domestic production of engines and equipment for electric power plants; increase metal and coal output; create a new defense industry; build plants to produce modern agricultural machinery, thereby establishing a material and technical basis for agriculture; and bring about the transition of millions of small individual peasant farms to large-scale kolkhoz production. Technological and economic backwardness, as well as the threat of intervention by the aggressive imperialist states, made it necessary to industrialize rapidly. Unlike the capitalist countries, most of which had begun industrialization by developing light industry, the USSR began its industrialization by developing heavy industry.
In order to complete these highly complex economic tasks it was necessary to overcome difficulties and above all to locate sources of capital investment in industry. Foreign sources of financing—loans and credits—were not available to the USSR. The party and government managed to find resources at the expense of domestic sources of accumulation. The key elements of the national economy—factories, mills, the land, transportation, the banks, and foreign trade—were controlled by the socialist state. Opportunities were therefore opened up for the socialist accumulation of funds for industrialization. The party and the government urged all working people to greater political and labor activism and mobilized the efforts of the working people in the struggle for an austerity regime, increased labor productivity, and decreased production costs. In 1926–27 the Soviet government allocated more than 1 billion rubles for industrial construction. The working people came to the aid of the state. The first industrialization loan of 200 million rubles was floated successfully in 1927. The rebuilding of industrial enterprises was completed; in 1926 and 1927, 788 plants and factories were modernized or newly built. The GOELRO plan was successfully translated into reality.
The tenth anniversary of the establishment of Soviet power was observed in 1927. The results of the historic victories were summed up at the anniversary session of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR, held in Leningrad from Oct. 15 to 20, 1927. The session adopted the manifesto “To All Workers, Toiling Peasants, and Red Army Men of the USSR, To the Proletarians of All Countries and the Oppressed Peoples of the World.” The manifesto proclaimed a gradual transition to the seven-hour workday and a number of other important measures aimed at improving the life of the people of the Soviet Union. The Soviet people achieved great successes in the first decade of Soviet power. In 1927 gross industrial output exceeded the 1913 level by 11 percent, machine-building output was one-third greater, and the capacity of electric power plants was greater by a factor of 1.5. In 1928 the socialist sector accounted for 82.4 percent of the gross industrial output and 76.4 percent of the retail trade; the number of industrial and nonindustrial workers reached 10.8 million.
The successes achieved gave evidence that in industry the question “Who will win?” would be decided in favor of socialism. Private capital was rapidly being driven out of trade as well: it accounted for 52.7 percent in 1924 and 23.6 percent in 1928; in wholesale trade, the figures were 9.4 percent and 5 percent, respectively.
The USSR found itself in a difficult international situation as it sought to carry out socialist construction amid capitalist encirclement. On May 12, 1927, a raid was carried out on Arcos, the Soviet company for trade with Great Britain, with the knowledge of the British government (S. Baldwin and A. Chamberlain); soon after, Great Britain broke off diplomatic and trade relations with the USSR. In China, attacks were organized on the USSR’s plenipotentiary mission in Peking and on its consulates in Shanghai and Tientsin. The USSR’s ambassador plenipotentiary in Poland, P. L. Voikov, was assassinated in Warsaw on June 7. The Soviet government adhered to a peace-loving policy. In 1927 the Soviet delegation (headed by M. M. Litvinov) to the preparatory commission for the League of Nations’ World Disarmament Conference submitted a proposal calling for total, general disarmament and the destruction of all means of warfare. The plan was rejected by the representatives of the capitalist states.
The first successes of socialist industrialization showed that socialist production relations, which were conducive to the rapid growth of productive forces, had become firmly established in industry. Agricultural development lagged markedly behind industry, however, and failed to keep up with the country’s growing needs. It remained technologically backward; because it relied on manual labor, it was not highly productive. In 1927 the USSR had more than 25 million small farms, a substantial percentage of which were operated on a semisubsistence basis. Poor peasants accounted for about 35 percent of peasant households, middle peasants for 60 percent, and kulaks for 5 percent.
Grain farming reached the prewar level in 1927. In 1926–27 the farms of the middle and poor peasants produced about 4 billion poods of grain, but the amount of marketed grain had decreased by 75 percent since 1913. Kulak farms produced 617 million poods of grain, of which 126 million poods was marketed grain. The sovkhozes and kolkhozes produced 80 million poods, of which 37.8 million poods was marketed grain. The decline in the portion of marketed grain disrupted the food supply to the city and army and threatened to undermine socialist industrialization. Difficulties with the food supply forced the government to introduce rationing in the cities in 1928.
Socialist construction could no longer be based both on large-scale socialist industry and on the small, individual peasant farm, which engendered capitalist elements. It was necessary to organize the peasantry on a mass basis into production cooperatives. Only through large-scale socialist farming could the material well-being and cultural level of the countryside be raised. Collectivization would meet the demands and aspirations of the peasants, who were becoming convinced that small farms could not provide an escape from want.
The Fifteenth Congress of the ACP(B), held in December 1927, defined the future paths of socialist construction and issued directives for drafting the first five-year plan. Proceeding from Lenin’s cooperative plan, which called for peasant farms to be amalgamated into large-scale socialist farms, the congress set the country on a course toward the collectivization of agriculture.
As socialist construction in the city and countryside proceeded, the class struggle intensified; resistance was offered by such capitalist elements as the kulaks, small proprietors, and tradesmen. Trotskyism and other left-revisionist groupings had been ideologically and organizationally routed, but in 1928 there developed in the party right-opportunist opposition, headed by Bukharin, A. I. Rykov, and M. P. Tomskii. The right opportunists were opposed to rapid industrialization, to the expanded collectivization of agriculture, and, subsequently, to the elimination of the kulak class. They proposed that spontaneous market forces be “unleashed” and that restrictions on kulak farms be removed; they opposed the increased taxation on these farms, the confiscation of grain surpluses in the course of grain procurement, and the appropriation of land surpluses from the kulaks. The rightists preached the “theory” that the class struggle would fade away and that the kulaks would peacefully accept socialism. Such a point of view, which would have led to the restoration of capitalism, contradicted the general party line. The party condemned the position of the right-opportunist group and declared that propaganda on behalf of the group’s ideas was incompatible with party membership. Rykov, who had been chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars since 1924, was removed from his post and replaced by V. M. Molotov in 1930.
In 1928 an organization of wreckers made up of members of the former bourgeoisie was discovered in the Shakhty region of the Donbas. The lessons of the Shakhty affair were discussed at a plenum of the Central Committee of the ACP(B) in 1928. The plenum set the task of training technical specialists from the working class more rapidly.
A specific program for constructing an economic foundation for a socialist society—the first five-year plan, for the development of the national economy of the USSR from 1929 to 1932—was approved by the Fifth Congress of Soviets of the USSR in May 1929. The first five-year plan was a logical extension and development of the long-term GOELRO plan. The main tasks of the first five-year plan were to build a foundation for a socialist economy, further displace capitalist elements in the cities and countryside, and strengthen the country’s defense capabilities. The plan provided for the transformation of the USSR from an agricultural to an industrially developed state. The collectivization of a substantial number of peasant farms was projected.
Beginning with the fourth quarter of 1928, the development of the national economy of the USSR was carried out on the basis of five-year plans, which incorporated Leninist ideas on long-range planning and expressed the party’s social and economic policies. Each five-year plan became a major event in the social, economic, and technological development of the USSR.
In the struggle to implement the first five-year plan, the Soviet working class provided models of heroic labor. The workers developed socialist competition, which became a movement embracing millions of working people. The shock-worker movement was the main form of competition during this period. The workers proposed industrial and financial counterplans; the main slogan of this time was “The five-year plan in four years!” The construction of electric power plants and large factories for the manufacture of tractors, motor vehicles, agricultural machinery, heavy machinery, metallurgical products, chemicals, aircraft, engines, and machine tools took place at unusually rapid rates. A second coal and metallurgical base was created for the USSR: the Urals-Kuznetsk Combine. Modernization of railroad transportation began, along with the construction of new trunk lines. New cities and workers’ settlements arose, and old industrial centers were expanded and modernized.
Industrialization went forward in the Union and autonomous republics. In the Ukraine, about 400 new plants were built during the first five-year plan, the coal and metallurgical industries were thoroughly modernized, and a large-scale machine-building industry was established. In Byelorussia, the plants built during the first five-year plan accounted for more than 50 percent of the republic’s total industrial output. Fundamental changes took place in Transcaucasia, Kazakhstan, and Middle Asia. Kazakhstan became one of the country’s main bases for nonferrous metallurgy, and Karaganda emerged as a third coal base for the USSR. Large textile mills were built in the Middle Asian republics.
As the enormous work of economic and cultural construction went forward, the Communist Party expanded its political and organizational activity. Party organizations sought to enhance the role of Soviet agencies and to make the day-to-day leadership at all levels of the state apparatus more effective.
The importance of the planning principle increased throughout the national economy. In 1930, Kuibyshev was appointed chairman of Gosplan, and Ordzhonikidze was named chairman of the Supreme Council on the National Economy. In 1932 the council was reorganized: three people’s commissariats were created from it, the most important being the People’s Commissariat for Heavy Industry, headed by Ordzhonikidze. The entire national economy was provided with new equipment, the introduction and mastery of which was crucial to socialist construction.
The country suffered from an acute shortage of skilled workers, engineers, and technicians, however. The old scientific and technical intelligentsia, which by this time stood firmly on the side of Soviet power, was small and could no longer satisfy the needs of expanding socialist construction. The party’s Central Committee and the Soviet government adopted a series of decrees on the training of specialists for industry and agriculture. A new production and technical intelligentsia made up of workers and peasants was rapidly formed. Over the course of the five-year plan the number of industrial higher educational institutions increased tenfold, and the number of technicums quadrupled. Technical training of managers and workers in all enterprises and construction projects was organized, and the number of schools of apprenticeship in industry increased.
A foundation for restructuring the countryside along socialist lines was created during industrialization. The total collectivization of agriculture and the elimination, on this basis, of the kulaks as a class began in 1929 and 1930. Up to the end of 1929, the party and government had pursued a policy of curbing and driving out the kulaks. The immediate preconditions for collectivization were realized through the work of the party and the government and through the development of various forms of cooperation among the peasantry; by 1929, 58.3 percent of peasant farms were in consumers’ cooperatives. The revolutionary transformation of the countryside was carried out with the active participation of the masses of poor and middle peasants.
The collectivization of agriculture was new, unprecedented, and extraordinarily difficult. An extremely complex social task, it affected millions of peasants. The transition to total collectivization constituted a radical shift by the toiling peasantry toward socialism and a turning point in the development of agriculture. On Jan. 5, 1930, the Central Committee of the ACP(B) approved the decree On the Pace of Collectivization and State Measures to Assist the Development of Kolkhozes, which established different lengths of time for implementing collectivization in the various agricultural regions. The party’s Central Committee stressed the Leninist principle of voluntary participation in kolkhoz construction and warned the party organizations against attempts to impose collectivization from above. On Feb. 1, 1930, the Central Executive Committee and Sovnarkom of the USSR issued the decree On Measures to Strengthen the Socialist Reconstruction of Agriculture in Regions of Total Collectivization and to Struggle Against the Kulaks. The working class provided key assistance in the socialist reconstruction of agriculture: in 1930 it sent 25,000 of its finest representatives—the Twenty-five Thousanders—to work in the countryside.
The kolkhoz system became established after a bitter class struggle against the kulaks, who constituted a malicious enemy of socialism and represented the last bulwark of the restoration of capitalism in the country. As of July 1, 1930, 23.6 percent of the peasant farms had been amalgamated into kolkhozes, as compared with 3.9 percent as of July 1, 1929. At the same time, the number of sovkhozes increased. The first machine-tractor stations were established. A decree issued by the Council of Labor and Defense on June 5, 1929, On the Organization of Machine-tractor Stations, accelerated construction of the stations.
Although successes were achieved in kolkhoz construction, serious errors were committed. Violations of the Leninist principle of voluntary participation took place, and explanatory work was sometimes replaced by bureaucratic fiat. In some cases collectivization went forward too rapidly. The party’s directives on the basic form of kolkhoz construction—the agricultural artel—were not adhered to. In some instances communes were established instead of artels. Excesses committed in implementing the party line harmed the kolkhoz movement.
The kulaks conducted malicious agitation against the kolkhozes, engaged in sabotage and terrorism, and incited the peasants to destroy livestock on a mass scale. Between 1928 and early 1930 the cattle population declined by 9.5 million, the swine population by 7.8 million, and the sheep and goat population by 13.7 million. Animal husbandry was seriously damaged. Difficulties with the food supply forced the government to retain rationing in the cities from 1928 to 1934.
The Central Committee of the ACP(B) took decisive steps to rectify errors and eliminate excesses. On Mar. 2, 1930, a more precise set of rules was promulgated: the revised Model Regulations of the Agricultural Artel, which clarified the socialization of the means of production. On instructions from the Central Committee of the ACP(B), Stalin’s article “Dizzy With Success” was published in Pravda. On Mar. 14, 1930, the Central Committee issued the special decree On the Struggle Against Distortions of the Party Line in the Kolkhoz Movement. Organizational, material, and financial aid by the state to the kolkhozes was expanded, and the construction of machine-tractor stations went forward more rapidly: their number increased from 158 on June 1, 1930, to 1,228 on June 1, 1931. Kolkhoz personnel were trained, and the existing kolkhozes were strengthened. By August 1930, 21.4 percent of peasant farms had been joined together in kolkhozes, and by June 1931, 52.7 percent. In 1931 there were 211,000 kolkhozes, made up of 13 million peasant farms. With collectivization and the elimination of the kulak class, the offensive against capitalist elements broadened both in the cities and in the countryside.
The Sixteenth Congress of the ACP(B), held in June and July 1930, has gone down in history as the congress of the full-scale socialist offensive on all fronts. The congress declared that the Soviet Union had entered the era of socialism.
The first five-year plan was fulfilled ahead of schedule through the efforts, led by Communists, of the working class, the kolkhoz peasantry, and the intelligentsia. The USSR was transformed from an agricultural country into an industrial-kolkhoz socialist power. The share of industry in industrial and agricultural output increased from 48 percent in 1928 to 70 percent in 1932. In 1932 industrial output was 267 percent of the 1913 level; the output of large-scale industry was 352 percent of the 1913 level. Total capital investment during the five-year plan amounted to 7.3 billion rubles, a figure 1.8 times higher than all capital investment for the period 1918–28. Half of all capital investment was directed toward the development of industry and transportation; heavy industry accounted for more than 75 percent of the investment in industry.
More than 1,500 industrial enterprises, supplied with the latest equipment, were established and put into service; new industrial centers arose, and the GOELRO plan was substantially overfulfilled. Over the course of the five-year plan, heavy industry grew by a factor of 2.8, and machine-building quadrupled, reaching a level seven times greater than in 1913. In machine building, the USSR was surpassed only by the USA. Production of consumer goods increased by 56 percent. Industrial output grew at an average annual rate of 15 percent under the first five-year plan. Labor productivity in industry increased by 28 percent.
The V. I. Lenin Dneproges Hydroelectric Power Plant went into operation. Many large enterprises were established, notably the Urals-Kuznetsk Metallurgical Combine; coal mines in the Donbas, Kuznetsk Coal Basin, and Karaganda; the Stalingrad and Kharkov tractor plants; the Moscow and Gorky automotive plants; and the First State Bearing Plant in Moscow. The 1,452-km Turksib Railroad was opened on May 1, 1930.
A powerful defense industry was created, making it possible to supply the armed forces with greatly improved equipment.
Important successes in industrial development were achieved in the Union and autonomous republics. During the five-year plan industrial output doubled in the old industrial regions of the country but increased by a factor of 3.5 in the non-Slavic republics. Heavy industry as a whole produced, before the end of the plan, 108 percent of the output called for; certain branches—the coal, metallurgical, and electric power industries—fell short.
The industrialization of the USSR was a great feat of the working class, the scientific and technical intelligentsia, and the people as a whole. Tireless and unstinting in their efforts, the people consciously accepted deprivation in order to lift the country from a state of backwardness. The Soviet peasantry played an active role in industrialization: it supplied industry with indispensable raw materials and the cities with food, directed substantial amounts of money toward industrialization, and provided industry with personnel.
A kolkhoz system that involved large-scale socialist land cultivation was established in the countryside. By late 1932, 61.5 percent of peasant households, working 77.7 percent of the sown area, had been collectivized. The elimination of the kulak class through the total collectivization of agriculture was a historic victory for socialism. In 1932 the socialist sector accounted for 78.1 percent of plantings of all crops and 84 percent of the grain produced for the market. During the five-year plan the number of tractors increased by more than 120,000. More than 200,000 kolkhozes were established, along with 4,300 sovkhozes and about 2,500 machine-tractor stations.
The profound social changes in the village and the equipping of agriculture with new machinery took place simultaneously. The revolutionary transformation of the countryside created new, socialist production relations. Soviet power established a socialist base in the most backward sphere of the national economy—agriculture. It became possible to mechanize agriculture fully and apply advanced agricultural technology. The First All-Union Congress of Kolkhoz Shock Workers, held in Moscow in February 1933, played a major role in strengthening the organization and management of the kolkhozes.
The socialist system became the sole economic system in industry and the dominant system in agriculture. The multiplicity of structures in the economy had essentially been eliminated. The material situation of the working people of the cities and the countryside improved. By the end of the first five-year plan, the national income was greater by 82 percent than in 1928 and by a factor of 2.2 than in 1913. The elimination of unemployment was a major achievement of socialist construction. The number of industrial and nonindustrial workers doubled, reaching 24.2 million, as compared to 11.4 million in 1928. An economic foundation for socialism had been laid in the USSR.
A cultural revolution was carried out simultaneously with industrialization and collectivization. On Aug. 14, 1930, the Central Executive Committee and Sovnarkom of the USSR approved the decree On Universal Compulsory Elementary Education. The literacy rate rose from 58.4 percent of the population in 1928 to 89.1 percent in 1932. The number of students in daytime general-education schools increased from 11.6 million in 1927–28 to 21.4 million in 1932–33; the number of students enrolled in higher educational institutions increased from 168,500 to 504,400. One of the most important achievements of the cultural revolution was the formation and rapid growth of a people’s socialist intelligentsia. Science, literature, and art underwent development (see; ; and ). The tasks of the Soviet multinational literature and art were defined in the decree of the Central Committee of the ACP(B) of Apr. 23, 1932, On the Restructuring of Literary and Artistic Organizations. The successes of Soviet literature, which developed along the path of socialist realism, were analyzed by the writer M. Gorky in his report to the First All-Union Congress of Writers in 1934.
The results of the first five-year plan were of great international importance: they demonstrated the superiority of the planned socialist economic system over the capitalist system.
Socialist industrialization and the collectivization of agriculture proceeded as the USSR faced a difficult international situation. The Chinese Eastern Railway was seized by Chinese warlords in the summer of 1929, an event that touched off a military conflict between the USSR and China. After being thrown back, the Chinese warlords were obliged to settle the conflict peacefully in December 1929. Normal diplomatic relations with Great Britain, which the British government had broken off in 1927, were restored with the signing of a protocol on Oct. 3, 1929. In 1929, as all the branches of the national economy were developing rapidly in the USSR, a worldwide economic crisis gripped the capitalist countries. The crisis, along with the successes of socialist construction in the USSR, intensified the interventionist mood among reactionary capitalist circles. The governments of the USA, France, Canada, and Belgium banned the import of Soviet goods and attempted to impose an economic blockade against the USSR. In October 1930 the Soviet government decided to end or decrease as far as possible its purchases in countries that had established a restrictive trade policy with respect to the Soviet Union.
The economic crisis exacerbated conflicts among the capitalist countries. The outbreak of a new war became increasingly likely. In 1931 militarist Japan seized Manchuria. The German fascists, who came to power in January 1933, followed policies that were to lead to World War II. The governments of the USA, Great Britain, and France decided to appease the aggressors and to refrain from interference in the aggressors’ affairs. The reactionary circles of a number of Western countries sought to direct fascist aggression against the country of socialism. In 1936, Germany and Japan concluded the Anti-Comintern Pact, in which Italy subsequently joined. The bloc of aggressive states was directed primarily against the USSR.
In response to the growing military threat, the Communist Party and the Soviet government worked to establish a system of alliances that would offer a united front to an aggressor. On Nov. 29, 1932, the Soviet government signed a treaty of nonaggression and neutrality with France. In 1932 similar treaties were signed with Latvia, Estonia, Poland, and Finland. Diplomatic relations between the USSR and the USA were established on Nov. 16, 1933. Agreements on the establishment of diplomatic relations with Czechoslovakia and Rumania were signed on June 9, 1934. On Sept. 18, 1934, the USSR joined the League of Nations at the invitation of a majority of member countries. The Soviet government signed a mutual aid pact with France on May 2, 1935, and a similar pact with Czechoslovakia on May 16.
The Soviet people took up a position in the vanguard of the fight to thwart fascism and prevent a world war. The Seventh Congress of the Comintern, held in Moscow from July 25 to Aug. 20, 1935, was dominated by a single issue: the struggle against fascism and against the preparation of a new war. A broad antifascist movement developed throughout the world.
At the beginning of 1933, the Soviet people set about fulfilling the second five-year plan, for the development of the national economy from 1933 to 1937; the plan was ratified by the Seventeenth Congress of the ACP(B), held in January and February 1934. The main political task of the plan was to eliminate capitalist elements once and for all, to eradicate all factors giving rise to class distinctions and exploitation, and to overcome vestiges of capitalism in the economy and in the consciousness of the people. The main economic task was to complete the technological modernization of the entire national economy, to master new technology, and to introduce new production methods.
The plan called for completing the collectivization of agriculture, further mechanizing agriculture, and strengthening the organization and management of the kolkhozes. The task was set of raising the material and cultural level of the working people by every possible means. As before, special attention was devoted to the economic development of the Union and autonomous republics and to the creation of new industrial centers in the eastern regions of the country. The national economy was supplied at an accelerated rate with highly productive equipment, which had to be used efficiently.
In 1935 there emerged a movement of innovators in socialist production who exceeded obsolete production quotas several times over; it became known as the Stakhanovite movement, after the Donets coalminer A. G. Stakhanov, who set a world record for mining coal in August 1935. Among other initiators of new forms of socialist competition were the cutter N. A. Izotov in the coal industry, the locomotive engineer P. F. Krivonos in transport, the forge operator A. Kh. Busygin in the automotive industry, the stretcher N. S. Smetanin in the footwear industry, the weavers E. V. Vinogradova and M. I. Vinogradova in the textile industry, and the milling-machine operator I. I. Gudov in the machine tool industry. In agriculture, leading initiators were the kolkhoz member M. S. Demchenko, the tractor driver P. N. Angelina, and the combine driver K. A. Borin. The Stakhanovite movement, a new stage in socialist competition, took on a mass scope and played a major role in the effort to master new technology and increase labor productivity.
The second five-year plan was fulfilled ahead of schedule. By the end of 1937 industrial output as a whole had risen by a factor of 2.2 since 1932 and a factor of 4.5 since 1928; it took the USA more than 35 years—from circa 1890 to 1926—to achieve a comparable growth. Industrial output had increased by a factor of 5.9 since 1913. The output of large-scale industry had risen by a factor of 8.2 since 1913 and a factor of 2.3 since 1932. More than 80 percent of all industrial output in 1937 was produced by new enterprises or by enterprises that had been thoroughly modernized during the first and second five-year plans. Capital investment in the national economy totaled 19.9 billion rubles. Some 4,500 new industrial installations went into operation. Among the largest were the Urals and Kramatorsk heavy machine-building plants, the Ural Railroad Car and Cheliabinsk Tractor plants, and the Azovstal’ and Zaporozhstal’ metallurgical plants. The 277-km Baltic-White Sea Canal and the 428-km Moscow-Volga Canal were dug; they were opened in 1933 and 1937, respectively.
Iron and steel output, coal output, and the amount of electric energy produced rose by a factor of 2–3 between 1932 and 1937. Three giants of ferrous metallurgy—the Magnitogorsk, Kuznetsk, and Makeevka plants—smelted as much pig iron as did the entire iron and steel industry of prerevolutionary Russia. The Dneproges plant produced more electric power than did all the electric power plants of Russia as a group in 1913. In 1937 industry manufactured about 200,000 motor vehicles, as compared with about 24,000 in 1932, and more than 177,000 tractors. The development of machine building was particularly successful during the second five-year plan. Labor productivity in industry increased by 82 percent. The USSR was transformed into a powerful industrial country, economically independent of the capitalist world; it supplied the national economy and the armed forces with new equipment and armaments. The USSR outstripped the main capitalist states in its industrial growth rate, which averaged 17.1 percent annually during the second five-year plan; in terms of industrial output, it moved into first place in Europe and second in the world, exceeded only by the USA. The USSR accounted for about 10 percent of world output.
The collectivization of agriculture was completed. The kolkhozes embraced 93 percent of the peasant households and included more than 99 percent of the total sown area. Major successes were achieved in supplying the kolkhozes with new equipment and strengthening their organization and management. By the end of 1937,456,000 tractors, 129,000 combines, and 146,000 trucks were being used in agriculture. Between 1913 and 1937 the sown area increased from 105 million ha to 135.3 million ha. Agriculture was experiencing serious difficulties, however, particularly in livestock raising.
The working people’s well-being improved. By 1937 the number of industrial and nonindustrial workers reached 28.6 million, and the wage fund of industrial and nonindustrial workers increased by a factor of 2.5. Rationing, introduced in late 1928, was abolished on Jan. 1, 1935. Proceeds from the sale of output by the kolkhozes tripled.
The 1930’s witnessed major successes in Soviet aviation: in 1934, Soviet aviators rescued the members of a polar expedition who had been forced to abandon the icebreaker Cheliuskin; in 1937, V. P. Chkalov and M. M. Gromov completed a nonstop flight from Moscow to New York; and in 1937 the scientific research station Severnyi Polius-1, staffed by I. D. Papanin, P. P. Shirshov, E. K. Fedorov, and E. T. Krenkel’, was landed on drifting ice in the central arctic. The Northern Sea Route was opened up.
The Communist Party led the peoples of the Soviet Union toward the victory of socialism. A new, socialist economy was created in the USSR. State ownership—ownership by all the people—and kolkhoz-cooperative ownership accounted for 99.6 percent of all production assets in the country by the end of the second five-year plan. All the exploiting classes were eliminated, and the sources of the exploitation of man by man were eradicated completely. New classes were formed: the Soviet working class and the kolkhoz peasantry, both free from exploitation, and a new, people’s intelligentsia drawn from the workers and peasants.
Soviet society became sociopolitically and ideologically united. Fundamental changes in the balance of class forces took place. In 1937,94.4 percent of those able to work were employed in the socialist economy. In that year, industrial and nonindustrial workers made up 45.7 percent of the total, as compared with 17.6 percent in 1928, and the kolkhoz peasantry and cooperatively organized craftsmen made up 48.8 percent, as compared with 2.9 percent in 1928. Peasant farmers with their own holdings and craftsmen who were not organized in cooperatives accounted for only 5.5 percent, as compared with 74.9 percent in 1928. A new, Soviet man was formed as great socialist transformations took place.
In 1936 the USSR included 11 Union republics: the RSFSR and the Ukrainian, Byelorussian, Kazakh, Turkmen, Uzbek, Kirghiz, Tadzhik, Azerbaijan, Georgian, and Armenian SSR’s. The economic and cultural backwardness of many of the peoples of the Soviet Union had been overcome. Outlying regions that had suffered from backwardness under the Russian Empire, had become industrially developed socialist republics under Soviet power. The peoples of Middle Asia, Kazakhstan, and certain other regions that before the revolution had been at the stage of the feudal and patriarchal clan system had now arrived at socialism, having bypassed the stage of capitalism. New, socialist nations (natsii, nations in the historical sense) had been formed. Under the banner of proletarian internationalism, their fraternal cooperation within the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was being strengthened.
With the industrialization of the country and the collectivization of agriculture, the cultural revolution was deepened and expanded. It consisted primarily in the development of public education, the establishment of a scientific socialist ideology, the creation of a new, socialist culture, and the overcoming of petit bourgeois views and mores. Illiteracy was totally wiped out by 1937, after 20 years of Soviet power.
The cultural and technical level of the workers and peasants changed fundamentally. The toiling masses assimilated the riches of world culture. By 1940 there were 817 higher educational institutions, with 812,000 students, as compared with 148 higher educational institutions and 169,000 students in 1928; there were 3,773 technicums, with 975,000 students, as compared with 1,037 technicums and 189,000 students in 1928. According to the 1939 census, the number of workers engaged in mental labor exceeded 13 million. The USSR had 1,821 scientific institutions, with 98,300 scientific workers in 1939, as compared with 289 scientific institutions and 4,200 scientific workers in 1914. A mass multinational press was established.
A major achievement of the cultural revolution was the formation of the socialist consciousness of the millions-strong masses of working people. The number of religious believers declined substantially. The progress of cultural construction was particularly rapid in the non-Slavic republics. Dozens of previously backward peoples acquired a written language of their own for the first time, along with national secondary and higher schools; they created a professional art and formed their own Soviet national intelligentsias. Literature and art became powerful weapons for the communist education of the masses. The enormous work performed by the party and the government to develop public education, science, literature, and art led to the flowering of a culture that was national in form and socialist in content.
The victory of socialism in the USSR was definitively codified in the Constitution of the USSR of 1936, a draft of which was discussed throughout the country. On Dec. 5, 1936, the Extraordinary Eighth Congress of Soviets of the USSR ratified the Constitution of the USSR, which reflected the profound changes that had taken place in the life of the Soviet people after the Great October Socialist Revolution as a result of socialist construction. Under the constitution, deputies to all soviets of working people’s deputies were to be elected directly; by secret ballot, on the basis of universal and equal suffrage. On Dec. 12, 1937, in accordance with the new constitution, the first Supreme Soviet of the USSR was elected; Kalinin was named chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. The Soviet people, the first to show mankind the path to socialism, had overcome tremendous difficulties. At a reception for foreign workers during the May Day celebrations in 1938, Kalinin stated, “The streets here are not paved with gold. There’s nothing like that. We have a state devoted to labor. When it began its work, this state was at a wretched level of existence—to put it graphically, we started out from Robinson Crusoe’s hut. . . . Perhaps many mistakes have been made here. I will admit it. Perhaps we sometimes do not do what we should do; I will admit it. But let me say this to you: . . . a proletarian world is being created” (Central Party Archives of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, collection 78, listing 1, file 679, sheets 35, 36, and 37). In eradicating the country’s centuries-old economic, cultural, and technological backwardness and building a new world, the Soviet people faced stubborn resistance from class enemies. Throughout this period, the USSR was in a state of capitalist encirclement and endured the constant threat of imperialist aggression.
Under the most difficult circumstances, the Communist Party unleashed the Soviet people’s prodigious energy, which was directed toward completing the tasks involved in socialist construction. A major role in achieving the victory of socialism—in industrializing the country, collectivizing agriculture, carrying out the cultural revolution, and strengthening the international position and military power of the USSR—was played by leading party, state, military, and public figures, including A. A. Andreev, V. Ia. Chubar’, Dzerzhinskii, Gorky, Kalinin, Kirov, Kosior, Kuibyshev, Litvinov, A. V. Lunacharskii, Mikoyan, Ordzhonikidze, Petrovskii, Postyshev, Ia. E. Rudzutak, N. M. Shvernik, Stalin, Tukhachevskii, and Voroshilov.
During the 1930’s difficulties were experienced that stemmed from what the party subsequently labeled the cult of personality surrounding Stalin. Stalin, at that time the general secretary of the party’s Central Committee, organized, along with other leading Soviet figures, the Soviet people’s struggle to construct a socialist society. As a political figure, he rendered service in the struggle against the Trotskyists, right opportunists, and bourgeois nationalists to implement the general Leninist party line; in addition, he contributed to the socialist transformation of the country—that is, to industrialization, the collectivization of agriculture, and the cultural revolution. Stalin gained respect, prestige, and popularity within the party and among the people. As stated in a decree of the Central Committee of the CPSU dated June 30, 1956, “All of our great victories erroneously came to be linked with his name. The successes achieved by the Communist Party and the Soviet land and the praise directed toward him turned Stalin’s head. As a result, the cult of personality surrounding Stalin took shape” (KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh, 8th ed., vol. 7, 1971, p. 206).
Stalin overestimated his own worth, came to believe that he was infallible, violated the norms of party life worked out by Lenin, and resolved many important party and state questions individually. In 1937, when socialism was already essentially victorious, when it had become possible to develop party and Soviet democracy on a broad footing, Stalin proposed the theoretically erroneous thesis that as socialism became stronger and as communist construction proceeded in the country, the class struggle would become increasingly exacerbated. “In practice, this incorrect theoretical formula served to justify the crudest violations of socialist legality and mass repression” of, among others, prominent party, state, and military figures (ibid., p. 208).
The cult of personality damaged the cause of the Communist Party and harmed Soviet society, but it could not and did not change the nature of the Soviet social structure and the socialist state; it could not lead the Soviet people away from the Leninist path. The Communist Party, its local organizations, and the Soviet people, all guided by the teachings of Leninism, lived an active, creative life.
Socialism had for the most part been built in the USSR. The country now entered a period in which it completed the construction of socialist society. The Eighteenth Congress of the ACP(B), held in March 1939, ratified the third five-year plan, for the development of the national economy of the USSR from 1938 to 1942. The plan provided for further growth of the country’s industrial might, the strengthening of the kolkhoz system, and the raising of the people’s material and cultural standard of living. Taking into account the complex international situation, the plan called for accelerated development of the defense industry, the creation of large state reserves, the establishment of backup enterprises in the Urals, the Volga Region, Siberia, and Middle Asia, and the construction of a new oil base, a “second Baku,” between the Volga and the Urals. The congress set the main economic task of the Soviet state: to catch up with and outstrip the main capitalist countries in per capita output.
In this period, socialist production proceeded in the shadow of the approaching world war. As before, the Soviet government adhered consistently to a policy of peace; it sought to create a system of collective security among nations. On Aug. 21, 1937, after Japan had attacked China, the USSR signed a nonaggression treaty with the Chinese government. The Red Army frustrated an attempt by the Japanese aggressors to violate the far eastern borders of the USSR near Lake Khasan in July and August 1938 and turned back a Japanese invasion of the Mongolian People’s Republic near the Khalkhin-Gol in May and August 1939.
In 1938, as Great Britain, France, and the USA looked on, fascist Germany seized Austria; in 1938 and 1939 it took Czechoslovakia. The USSR offered direct military aid to Czechoslovakia, even in the event that France should repudiate its treaty obligations, but the government of bourgeois Czechoslovakia rejected the offer and surrendered to fascism. Disguising their true plans, the governments of Great Britain and France in 1939 began negotiating a mutual aid treaty with the Soviet Union. At the same time, they carried on negotiations with fascist Germany aimed against the USSR. The ruling circles of Great Britain and France made it impossible to reach an agreement on a joint struggle against fascist aggression. The USSR found it necessary to accept a proposal by Germany and signed a nonaggression treaty on Aug. 23, 1939. On Sept. 1, 1939, World War II began with fascist Germany’s attack on Poland. On September 3, Great Britain and France declared war on Germany. Despite the resistance of Polish troops, the Polish state had ceased to exist by mid-September. Fascist German troops advanced through Poland toward the Soviet border, posing a threat to the USSR. The Soviet people could not remain indifferent to the fate of the fraternal peoples of the Western Ukraine and Western Byelorussia. In September 1939 the Red Army crossed the state border and took under its protection the population of the Western Ukraine and Western Byelorussia; Vilnius and the surrounding region were also liberated and returned to Lithuania. The liberation of the Western Ukraine and Western Byelorussia redressed the injustice that the two regions had suffered and made possible the national reunification of the Ukrainians and Byelorussians. The fifth session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (Nov. 1–2, 1939) acceded to the request of the peoples of the Western Ukraine and Western Byelorussia that they be accepted into the USSR. The Western Ukraine was reunited with the Ukrainian SSR on November 14, and Western Byelorussia was reunited with the Byelorussian SSR on November 12.
In September and October 1939 the USSR concluded treaties of mutual aid with Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. The countries’ ruling circles, whose sympathies lay with fascist Germany, attempted to violate the pacts; they thereby provoked the indignation of the peoples of the Baltic region. In June 1940 the bourgeois nationalist governments were overthrown by their own peoples. In July 1940 elections were held to the People’s Saeima of Latvia, the People’s Seimas of Lithuania, and the State Council of Estonia. On July 21 the peoples of the Baltic region reestablished Soviet power in their countries. The Latvian SSR, Lithuanian SSR, and Estonian SSR were formed, and they voluntarily joined the USSR in early August 1940.
Seeking to strengthen the defense of its northwestern borders, the Soviet government proposed to Finland in 1939 that the border northwest of Leningrad, which at its closest lay 32 km from the city, be moved back; in exchange, Finland would be given a considerably larger amount of territory in western Karelia. Finland rejected this proposal, and at the end of November 1939, the Finnish militarists provoked a war. The subsequent Soviet-Finnish peace treaty, signed on Mar. 12, 1940, established a new state boundary that ensured the security of Leningrad and Murmansk. The Karelian Isthmus, with the city of Vyborg, passed to the USSR. A substantial portion of the new territory became part of the Karelian ASSR, which was reorganized as the Karelian-Finnish SSR in March 1940.
In June 1940 the Soviet government proposed to the royal government of Rumania that it return to the USSR Bessarabia, which it had seized in 1918, and that it cede northern Bucovina, which was inhabited by Ukrainians. On June 28, Rumania accepted the proposal of the USSR. Much of Bessarabia was reunited with the Moldavian ASSR, which was reorganized as the Moldavian SSR on Aug. 2, 1940. Northern Bucovina and certain districts of Bessarabia that were predominantly Ukrainian were reunited with the Ukrainian SSR. The reunification of the Western Ukraine, Western Byelorussia, the Baltic republics, and Bessarabia with the USSR strengthened the security of the Soviet Union, since aggressors could have used these regions as staging grounds for attacks on the nerve centers of the Soviet state.
World War II intensified. The threat hanging over the country motivated the Soviet people to strengthen the state’s defensive capabilities and to fulfill the third five-year plan. In 3½ years 3,000 new industrial installations went into operation, including the Novotagil’skii and Petrovsk-Zabaikal’skii metallurgical plants, the Sredneural’sk and Balkhash copper smelteries, the Ufa Oil Refinery, the Moscow Compact-car Plant, the Enakievo Cement Plant, and the Segezha and Mari pulp and paper combines. By 1940 the length of railroad lines in use reached 106,100 km, as compared with 71,700 in 1913. Capital investment in the national economy totaled about 21 billion rubles.
Industrial output in the first 3½ years of the third five-year plan increased 46 percent. Large-scale industry in Moscow alone produced 1.8 times more output in 1940 than did the entire large-scale industry of prerevolutionary Russia. Negligible growth was achieved in the production of steel, iron, and petroleum, however. The party’s Central Committee and the Sovnarkom adopted several important resolutions on further developing the coal industry and new branches in such industries as the petroleum, metallurgical, and machine-building industries. Many people’s commissariats were broken down into smaller units, and new people’s commissariats were formed to oversee narrower branches of industry. The number of industrial and nonindustrial workers reached 33.9 million in 1940.
As work proceeded toward the fulfillment of the five-year plan, several measures were implemented to increase industrial production, improve the quality of industrial output, and strengthen labor discipline. The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR promulgated the edicts On the Transition to an Eight-hour Workday and Seven-day Workweek and On a Ban Prohibiting Blue-collar and White-collar Workers From Leaving Their Jobs at Enterprises or Institutions Without Authorization (June 26, 1940), On the Responsibility of Industrial Enterprises for the Production of Inferior or Incomplete Output and for Noncompliance with Mandatory Standards (July 10, 1940), and On the State Labor Reserves (Oct. 2, 1940).
In 1940 there were about 237,000 kolkhozes, uniting 96.9 percent of all peasant households, and 4, 200 sovkhozes. The sown area continued to expand, gross agricultural output rose, and grain procurements increased, making it possible to create essential state reserves. Agriculture became more mechanized. Between 1938 and 1940 more than 1,200 new machine-tractor stations were organized. Three-fourths of all plowland on the kolkhozes and more than half of all cropland was worked by tractors, and on 43 percent of the land under grains, combines were used for harvesting. The grain problem had not yet been resolved, however, and harvests remained small. By the beginning of 1941, the cattle population had still not reached its prerevolutionary level.
On the labor front, a broad patriotic movement of the people of Soviet Russia developed in the cities and in the countryside. The honorary title Hero of the Soviet Union, the highest distinction for service to the state, was established on Apr. 16, 1934. The title Hero of Socialist Labor, the highest level of distinction in labor, was established on Dec. 27, 1938. The medals For Valor in Labor and For Distinguished Service in Labor were instituted.
Major steps were taken to strengthen the defense capabilities of the USSR. At the beginning of 1939 people’s commissariats were created for the aviation industry, armaments, ammunition, and shipbuilding. Defense expenditures increased from 18.7 percent of the total budget in 1938 to 32.6 percent in 1940. The armed forces were shifted completely to regular status. Between 1934 and 1939 the Red Army more than doubled in size. The Law on Universal Military Obligation was adopted on Sept. 1, 1939, and a new text for the oath of allegiance was introduced in January 1939. In January 1941 the armed forces of the USSR were 4.2 million strong. The Pacific and Northern fleets were created. The defense industry produced 46.5 percent more output in 1939 than the previous year, and it began manufacturing new models of planes, tanks, artillery pieces, and automatic weapons; lot production of many types of matériel was still in the development stage, however.
On the eve of the Great Patriotic War the USSR was a strong industrial-kolkhoz socialist power. It comprised 16 Union Soviet socialist republics and had a total population of 191.7 million.
Hundreds of new cities were founded during the war years, notably Magnitogorsk, Berezniki, Komsomol’sk-na-Amure, Elektrostal’, Karaganda, and Igarka, and 9,000 major new industrial enterprises were established. In 1940 the gross output of industry as a whole was 7.7 times greater than in 1913, and the output of producer goods was 13 times greater.
In 1940, the USSR produced 15 million tons of pig iron, 18.3 million tons of steel, 166 million tons of coal, and 3.131 billion tons of petroleum; the increases over output in 1913 were by factors of 3.5, 4.3, 5.7, and 3, respectively. The production of electric energy reached 48.6 billion kilowatt-hours, as compared with 2 billion in 1913.
Major successes were achieved in agriculture as well. In 1940 the total sown area was 150.6 million ha, as compared with 118.2 million ha in 1913; in 1940,110.7 million ha were sown to grains, as compared with 104.6 million ha in 1913. The USSR produced 95.6 million tons of grain in 1940, as compared with 86 million tons in 1913, and 2.24 million tons of seed cotton, as compared with 0.74 million tons in 1913. Agriculture had at its disposal 7,069 machine-tractor stations, 531,000 tractors, 182,000 grain-harvesting combines, and 228,000 trucks; the number of machine operators employed in agriculture exceeded 1.4 million.
The Soviet people had by their efforts created a tremendous military and economic potential and built up the material and nonmaterial resources needed to repel aggression.
Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union of 1941–45. Striving for world domination, German fascism, the most aggressive offshoot of world imperialism, unleashed World War II after seizing Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1938–39. Between 1939 and 1941, fascist German troops occupied Poland, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Norway, France (November 1942), Greece, and Yugoslavia. On June 22, 1941, fascist Germany invaded the USSR without declaring war, treacherously violating the nonaggression pact.
German imperialism sought to destroy the world’s first socialist state, to exterminate millions of people, and to enslave the peoples of the Soviet Union, thus securing its path to world domination. Germany’s allies—Italy, Finland, Rumania, and Hungary—also entered the war against the USSR. The strategic plan of the fascist German command, known as Operation Barbarossa, envisioned a victory through blitzkrieg. The peoples of the USSR, under the leadership of the Communist Party and the Soviet government, rose up for the patriotic liberation war against the aggressors, displaying unprecedented determination and unparalleled bravery in the defense of the socialist homeland.
At the beginning of the war, the aggressors succeeded in gaining important victories and forcing Soviet troops to retreat. This can be explained by a number of reasons. Germany directed about 190 divisions against the USSR—153 German, 18 Finnish, 17 Rumanian, and two Hungarian divisions. The enemy numbered 5.5 million soldiers and officers, more than 47,000 guns and infantry mortars, more than 4,300 tanks, about 5,000 combat planes, and 193 fighting ships. Long before the war, fascist Germany had placed its entire economy on a war footing, and its military-industrial capabilities were very high. The fascist German troops had at their disposal the economic and human resources of the enslaved countries of virtually all of Western Europe. A total of 6,500 enterprises were producing military equipment; more than 3 million foreign workers were working in industry, and many armaments and much matériel were plundered. The military and economic resources of Germany and its allies were more than double those of the USSR. The enemy had a fully mobilized army and two years of experience in conducting modern warfare. Not meeting the proper resistance in the Western European theater of military operations, the fascist command was able to carry out without interference the strategic concentration and deployment of its forces on the borders of the USSR.
Unlike the enemy’s troops, the Soviet Army had no experience conducting extensive modern warfare. The command personnel of the Soviet Army, many of whom had only assumed command on the eve of the war, also lacked the practical skills for directing large units. The reorganization of the Soviet armed forces and their technical reequipment with the newest matériel (especially airplanes, tanks, and antiaircraft and antitank artillery) were vigorously carried out but were far from completed.
The miscalculations of J. V. Stalin (chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars from 1941) and the military leadership in determining the possible time of Germany’s attack and the associated lapses in preparations to repel the enemy’s first strikes had serious adverse consequences. As a result, the troops of the western border districts were not brought to a state of combat readiness in time. Since their strategic deployment was not completed, they were dispersed over a front stretching for 4,500 km and measuring more than 400 km in depth. The enemy’s attack was a surprise attack. The forces of the border districts could oppose the enemy with 170 divisions at less than full strength, a total of 3 million men. The enemy outnumbered Soviet forces by 1.8 times in personnel, 1.5 times in medium and heavy tanks, 3.2 times in combat planes, and 1.25 times in guns and infantry mortars. The superiority of the fascist German forces was even greater along the principal axes of attack. This made it possible for the aggressor to inflict powerful strikes along the Leningrad, Moscow, and Kiev axes and to seize the initiative. Protecting the state borders, the Soviet troops heroically resisted the invaders; in fighting lasting more than 22 days, the enemy lost about 100,000 men in dead and wounded and about one-half of its tanks. However, in the unequal struggle, Soviet troops suffered heavy losses in men and matériel and were forced to fall back. In the course of three weeks, the enemy succeeded in putting 28 Soviet divisions out of action; more than 70 divisions lost more than 50 percent of their complement of men, armaments, and matériel. By the beginning of July 1941, the fascist German troops had captured Lithuania, most of Latvia, the western part of Byelorussia, and certain areas of the western parts of the Ukraine and continued their offensive. A highly grave and dangerous situation developed for the Soviet Union. However, the fighting spirit of the Soviet armed forces remained unbroken, and the determination of the Soviet people did not waver.
The Communist Party and the Soviet government took every necessary step to organize efforts to repulse the enemy. On June 29, the Central Committee of the ACP(B) and the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR issued a directive to all party and state organs, which on July 3 was made public over the radio in a speech by Stalin, general secretary of the Central Committee of the ACP(B) and chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR. The directive analyzed the military and international situation, disclosed the criminal aggressive goals of German imperialism, and defined the tasks of the people and the army in the Great Patriotic War. The party addressed the Soviet people with the appeal “Everything for the front, everything for victory!” The directive became the program of the Soviet people’s struggle against the fascist German invaders. The party and Soviet government restructured the forms and methods of work in accordance with wartime conditions. Through a joint decision adopted on June 30, 1941, by the Central Committee of the ACP(B), the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, and the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR, an emergency body was formed, the State Defense Committee, headed by Stalin. Many secretaries of the Central Committee of the ACP(B), the central committees of the parties of the Union republics, and the party’s krai, oblast, and city committees joined the military councils, the political administrations of the fronts, and the political divisions of the army; they included L. I. Brezhnev, K. E. Voroshilov, A. A. Zhdanov, Ia. E. Kalnberzin, A. A. Kuznetsov, D. Z. Manuil’skii, P. K. Ponomarenko, A. Iu. Snechkus, M. A. Suslov, N. S. Krushchev, and A. S. Shcherbakov. M. I. Kalinin, chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, frequently toured the front and the cities in the rear, mobilizing the people to crush the enemy. The most important sectors of the national economy, which ensured supplies to the army, were headed by the members of the State Defense Committee N. A. Voznesenskii and Anastas I. Mikoyan, the secretary of the Central Committee, A. A. Andreev, and the chairman of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions, N. M. Shvernik. In the first six months of the war, more than 1.1 million Communist Party members—one-third of all the members of the territorial party organizations—entered the armed forces in response to the party’s appeal, either voluntarily or under the general mobilization; by the end of 1941, there were 1.3 million Communists in the army, which constituted more than 40 percent of the party’s total membership. The resolution of June 23, 1941, of the Central Committee of the ACP(B) and the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR established the General Headquarters of the High Command, which on August 8 was transformed into the General Headquarters of the Supreme Command. Stalin was appointed commander in chief of the armed forces of the USSR. The most important plans and decisions of the General Headquarters were reviewed by the Politburo of the Central Committee and the State Defense Committee, thus ensuring the decisive influence of the party on all aspects of the direction of the armed forces. The chief working agency of the General Headquarters was the General Staff. The party and the government focused their attention on the deployment and strengthening of the army. Amid a great patriotic upsurge, there was a mobilization of all men subject to military service in accordance with the decree of June 22, 1941, of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. By July 1, 5.3 million men had been mobilized.
In the first few days of the war, hundreds of thousands of Soviets joined the people’s volunteer corps (12 divisions and dozens of fighter battalions in Moscow, ten divisions and 14 machine gun-artillery battalions in Leningrad). Hundreds of thousands of city residents participated in the construction of defensive lines on the approaches to Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, and other cities. In the enemy’s rear, a partisan movement emerged, and the activity of underground party and Komsomol organizations expanded.
The reorganization of the entire national economy for war proceeded amid extraordinarily difficult conditions; the mass production of armaments and matériel was begun. The country became a single armed camp. In the first three months of the war, more than 1,360 large, primarily military and industrial, enterprises and about 10 million people were relocated from the western regions to the Urals, the Volga Region, Siberia, and Middle Asia. Despite privations, difficulties in the provision of foodstuffs, and a housing shortage, the installation of the evacuated enterprises at the new sites was completed rapidly: within three to four months, the output of these enterprises reached the prewar level.
Motivated by feelings of Soviet patriotism and inspired by the Communist Party, the working class, kolkhoz peasantry, and intelligentsia displayed extraordinary labor productivity, labor discipline, and socialist consciousness. New forms of socialist competition emerged: the movement of the “200 percenters” and “300 percenters” (people who fulfilled twice or three times the norm—for themselves and for their comrades at the front) and the movements of workers operating several machines simultaneously and workers combining jobs. To replace the brothers, husbands, and fathers who had gone to the front, hundreds of thousands of women joined the labor force, rapidly mastering various factory trades. Tens of thousands of retired workers returned to work. Millions of young men and women from the cities and villages, including a large number of adolescents, began working in the factories, mills, and mines; throughout the war, more than 2 million young people joined the ranks of industrial workers through the system of state labor reserves alone. Komsomolyouth frontline brigades sprang up at various enterprises. Despite a sharp decline in labor resources and the means of mechanization, the kolkhoz peasantry worked heroically to supply the front and rear with large quantities of products.
The fighting unfolded on a vast scale in the summer of 1941. Soviet troops selflessly defended their native land in fierce defensive battles, inflicting heavy losses on the enemy and destroying the enemy’s best troops and matériel. The small encircled garrison of the Brest Fortress held off the enemy for an entire month (up to July 20). The battle of Smolensk of 1941, in the course of which the Soviet Guard was born, and the heroic defense of Kiev lasted for more than two months (July to September), while the heroic defense of Odessa continued for 73 days (August 5 to October 16), and that of Sevastopol’, for 250 days (Oct. 30, 1941 to July 4, 1942). The enemy broke through to Leningrad in July, and the battle of Leningrad of 1941–44, which lasted for almost 900 days, began. The Soviet Army was forced to wage a strategic defense. In the rear of the country, new large units were rapidly organized. Between June 22 and Dec. 1, 1941, 291 divisions and 94 brigades were sent into the field.
The struggle of the Soviet people for the independence of their fatherland merged with the liberation struggle of the peoples of Europe, Asia, and America. On July 12, 1941, Great Britain signed an agreement with the USSR on joint actions in the war against Germany. The Moscow Conference of representatives of the USSR, the USA, and Great Britain was held from Sept. 29 to Oct. 1, 1941. On Jan. 1, 1942, 26 states, including the USSR, the USA, Great Britain, and China, signed a declaration on combining military and economic resources to defeat the fascist bloc. The USSR became the leading, decisive force in the nascent anti-Hitler coalition.
By the autumn of 1941, the enemy had succeeded in blocking Leningrad from the land, seizing the Ukraine, breaking through to Rostov-on-Don, and advancing as far as the approaches to Moscow. The large-scale battle of Moscow of 1941–42 unfolded. In defensive fighting in the vicinity of Moscow and of Tula in October and November 1941, the enemy’s troops were greatly weakened, as a result of which they lost their offensive momentum. At the beginning of December, the troops of the Western Front (commanded by General G. K. Zhukov), the Kalinin Front (commanded by General I. S. Konev), and the right wing of the Southwestern Front (commanded by Marshal S. K. Timoshenko) passed to the counteroffensive.
Owing to the unceasing activity of the Communist Party and the Soviet government and to the courage of the fighting men and the selflessness of all of the Soviet people, a major defeat was inflicted on the fascist aggressor. The enemy suffered great losses and was thrown back far from the capital. The fascist German adventurist plan for blitzkrieg was thwarted at Moscow, and the myth of the invincibility of the German Army was dispelled. The rout of the fascist German troops near Moscow was the decisive military and political event of the first year of the Great Patriotic War and fascist Germany’s first major defeat since the start of World War II.
In the spring and summer of 1942, the fascist German command, mobilizing the economic resources of Germany and the countries it had occupied and exploiting the absence of a second front in Europe, which Great Britain and the USA were pledged to open but continued to delay, concentrated about 80 percent of its total armed forces against the USSR. By May 1942, there were 217 enemy divisions (6.2 million men) on the Soviet-German front and 5.5 million men on the active Soviet fronts and in the fleets. By the beginning of the summer campaign, the enemy had numerical superiority in men and matériel (except in tanks).
The fascist German troops developed major offensive operations in the south. They intended to capture Stalingrad and, severing Soviet lines of communications on the Volga, to take the oil regions of the Caucasus. The fascist German leadership expected that the successful execution of these operations would create the conditions for the subsequent assault against Moscow and the conclusion of the war in 1942.
The Soviet Army once again was forced to engage in heavy defensive fighting, falling back to the Volga and the foothills of the Caucasus. The enormous efforts of the Soviet people and armed forces halted the enemy, whose strategic goals of the summer campaign were not achieved. The position of fascist Germany worsened.
The Soviet people achieved their successes under extraordinarily difficult conditions, at a time when the enemy had captured the richest parts of the country: the Ukraine, Byelorussia, Moldavia, the Baltic Region, the Don and Kuban’ regions, the Crimea, the Northern Caucasus, and the western, northwestern, and certain parts of the southern regions of the RSFSR. Before the war, 45 percent of the population of the USSR lived in the captured areas, which accounted for 33 percent of the industrial output, 63 percent of the mined coal, 71 percent of the smelted pig iron, 58 percent of the smelted steel, 47 percent of the cultivated area, and about 45 percent of the total livestock population. The fascists established a regime of terror in the occupied area, mercilessly exterminating the civilian population. Under the direction of underground party organizations, a partisan war developed in the enemy’s rear. The underground central committees of the party in Byelorussia and the Ukraine and the party’s underground oblast, city, and raion committees in the areas occupied by the enemy directed the daily operations of the partisans.
The battle of Stalingrad of 1942–43 and the battle for the Caucasus began in the summer and autumn of 1942. The heroic defense on the Volga made it possible to bring about a radical change in the balance of forces and to create powerful military-strategic reserves. Relying on the war industry, which had already been established and was now growing and continuously supplying the troops with the newest matériel and armaments, the command was able to form a significant number of new divisions and to concentrate many tanks and much artillery on the Volga. On Nov. 19–20, 1942, the troops of the Southwestern Front (commanded by General N. F. Vatutin), the Stalingrad Front (commanded by General A. I. Eremenko), and the Don Front (commanded by General K. K. Rokossovskii) passed to the counteroffensive near Stalingrad and encircled a fascist German grouping numbering 330,000 men (commanded by Field Marshal F. Paulus). By Feb. 2, 1943, the grouping had been completely destroyed and many were taken prisoner. The losses of the fascist bloc in the course of the battle of Stalingrad amounted to about 1.5 million men, that is, nearly one-fourth of all the forces on the Soviet-German front at the time. The victory of the Soviet forces in the battle for the Caucasus, in which the enemy also suffered total defeat, was closely linked to the victory at Stalingrad. In January 1943, Soviet troops broke through the blockade of Leningrad.
The victory on the Volga was a historic feat of the Soviet nation and its armed forces. It marked a radical turning point in the course of the Great Patriotic War, as well as the entire Second World War, and proved to be of great military, political, and international significance. The antifascist coalition was strengthened. The struggle of the enslaved peoples of Europe, especially of Yugoslavia and France, against the fascist occupiers increased; the resistance movement gained increasing strength. Turkey and Japan were forced to refrain from entering the war against the USSR. The strategic initiative was wrested from the enemy, and the Soviet Supreme Command embarked on preparations for the enemy’s complete expulsion from the Soviet Union.
The decisive event of World War II in the summer of 1943 was the battle of Kursk (July 5 to Aug. 23; 1943). After defeating the enemy’s Kursk grouping and passing to a general offensive, Soviet troops threw back the enemy beyond the Dnieper. Kiev was liberated on Nov. 6, 1943, during the battle for the Dnieper. With the battle of Kursk, the Soviet Army thwarted the last attempt of the fascist German command to alter the course of the war in its favor. The victory at the Kursk salient (Kursk bulge) signified the conclusion of the radical turning point in the Great Patriotic War. The fascist troops were forced to pass to the defensive along the entire Soviet-German front.
The partisan movement assumed ever-greater proportions, becoming a major political and military-strategic force. More than 1 million Soviet patriots participated in the partisan struggle during the war. Partisan units carried out protracted raids in the enemy’s rear, inflicting serious blows, and conducted large-scale operations to destroy the communications of the enemy’s forces (Operation Rail War).
The victories of the Soviet troops in battles on the Volga, at the Kursk salient, and on the Dnieper were the outcome of the altered balance of forces on the Soviet-German front in favor of the Soviet Army, the growing military skill of the Soviet commanders, the increasing strength of the Soviet armed forces, and the heroism of the Soviet soldiers and the workers in the rear. The war industry achieved great successes in 1943. In the course of the year, it produced 130,000 guns, infantry mortars, and rocket-launching components, tens of millions of shells and mines, 24,000 tanks and self-propelled guns, and about 35,000 combat planes. The Soviet war industry produced a vast quantity of matériel during the war, which in combat qualities was superior to that of the enemy (see Table 4).
Table 4. Production of military weapons by the USSR and Germany1 during the Great Patriotic War	Table 4. Production of military weapons by the USSR and Germany1 during the Great Patriotic War	Table 4. Production of military weapons by the USSR and Germany1 during the Great Patriotic War	Table 4. Production of military weapons by the USSR and Germany1 during the Great Patriotic War	Table 4. Production of military weapons by the USSR and Germany1 during the Great Patriotic War
 	USSR 	USSR 	Germany 	Germany
 	July 1, 1941–June 30, 1945 	Annual average 	1941–45 	Annual average
1 Figures for Germany include satellites and occupied countries 	1 Figures for Germany include satellites and occupied countries 	1 Figures for Germany include satellites and occupied countries 	1 Figures for Germany include satellites and occupied countries 	1 Figures for Germany include satellites and occupied countries
Rifles and carbines ............... 	12,000,000 	3,000,000 	7,500,000 	1,800,000
Submachine guns ............... 	6,103,000 	1,525,000 	1,247,000 	311,000
Light and heavy machine guns ............... 	954,500 	238,000 	617,000 	154,000
Infantry mortars ............... 	347,900 	86,900 	68,000 	17,000
Guns ............... 	188,100 	47,000 	102,100 	25,500
Tanks and self-propelled guns ............... 	95,099 	23,774 	53,800 	13,450
Combat planes ............... 	108,028 	27,007 	78,900 	19,725
Motor vehicles and prime movers ............... 	205,000 	51,000 	375,000 	93,700
The enemy’s quantitative superiority in men and matériel was eliminated in 1943. The Soviet people simultaneously waged war and built new enterprises, mines, and power plants. In the period 1942–44, about 2,250 new large industrial enterprises were built and put into operation in the eastern parts of the country. At the same time, more than 6,000 enterprises and 19,000 km of railroad were restored in the liberated areas.
The victories of the Soviet troops in 1943 altered the entire course of World War II. The resistance movement in the Western European countries became increasingly more active. As a result of the successes of the Soviet Army and the Allied troops in North Africa and Italy, Italy surrendered on Sept. 3, 1943. The disintegration of the fascist block began. At the Tehran Conference of 1943 (November 28 to December 1) of the heads of state of the USSR, Great Britain, and the USA (Stalin, W. Churchill, and F. D. Roosevelt), plans were coordinated and the scope and timetable of operations that were to ensure the defeat of fascist Germany and its satellites were determined. Great Britain and the USA, which had postponed the opening of a second front in Europe, promised to begin landing troops in France no later than May 1944.
The situation of fascist Germany had deteriorated sharply by early 1944. However, the enemy maintained a stubborn defense. Soviet troops dealt one shattering blow after another in 1944. The fascist German grouping near Leningrad was routed in January and February, the Right-bank Ukraine was liberated between January and April, and the Crimea and Odessa were liberated in April and May. The enemy’s Karelian grouping was destroyed between June and August. Actively supported by the Byelorussian partisans, the Soviet troops routed the German Army Group Center between June and August 1944, liberated Byelorussia and a large part of Lithuania, and reached the Vistula River and East Prussia. The First Polish Army participated in the liberation of the eastern parts of Poland.
On June 6, 1944, the second front against fascist Germany was opened at long last by the Anglo-American invasion of France’s shore. In August, Soviet troops routed the major enemy forces in the vicinity of Iaşi and of Kishinev, as a result of which the Moldavian SSR was liberated. Under the direct influence of the events on the Soviet-German front, there was a popular uprising in Rumania in August 1944, followed by one in September in Bulgaria, where revolutionary-democratic forces came to power. Rumania and Bulgaria declared war on fascist Germany. The Soviet Army entered Hungary in October, and by the end of the year it had liberated most of the country. Germany’s ally Finland left the war on September 4. The Estonian SSR and a large part of the Latvian SSR were liberated between September and November. Soviet troops helped the National Liberation Army of Yugoslavia to drive the occupiers from most of Yugoslavia in September and October. Soviet troops entered Czechoslovakia, and in October they freed the polar region and the northern part of Norway.
With the exception of a small part of Latvia, fascist troops were expelled from the USSR in 1944. In many operations, Soviet troops skillfully encircled and wiped out large enemy groupings, for example, at Bobruisk, Vitebsk, and Minsk (up to 30 divisions), at Korsun’-Shevchenkovskii (more than ten divisions), and near Iaşi and Kishinev (as many as 22 divisions). Hundreds of thousands of enemy soldiers and officers were taken prisoner.
In fulfilling its great mission of liberation, the USSR aided the peoples of Europe in their deliverance from fascist oppression. The fascist bloc in Europe broke up once and for all. Military operations were shifted to Germany’s soil.
By the beginning of 1945, the Soviet armed forces had achieved significant superiority over the enemy. There were 13.6 million men in the Soviet Army and Navy, including 6.4 million men in the army in the field (see Table 5). However, the enemy continued its stubborn resistance. A major offensive was launched in January 1945 by Soviet forces along a front stretching from the Baltic to the Carpathians for a distance of 1,200 km. Polish, Rumanian, Czech, and Bulgarian small and large units participated. Poland and a sizable part of Czechoslovakia were liberated in the course of the winter offensive. The enemy was thrown back from the Vistula to the Oder and the Niesse (Vistula-Oder Operation of 1945). The victorious offensive of the Soviet Army foiled the offensive of the fascist German forces into the Ardennes, where the Anglo-American forces faced a grave situation.
At the Yalta Conference of the heads of state of the USSR, the USA, and Great Britain, held in February 1945, plans for the final defeat of fascist Germany were coordinated.
The final operations of the Soviet armed forces began in the spring of 1945. In the middle of April 1945, the troops of three fronts—the First Byelorussian Front (commanded by Marshal G. K. Zhukov), the First Ukrainian Front (commanded by Marshal I. S. Konev), and the Second Byelorussian Front (commanded by Marshal K. K. Rokossovskii)—launched the decisive offensive along the Berlin axis, routing the enemy’s major grouping and capturing the capital of Germany on May 2. Soviet forces liberated Prague on May 9. On May 8 fascist Germany surrendered unconditionally. On May 9, 1945, the Soviet land celebrated Victory Day.
The Potsdam Conference of the leaders of the USSR, the USA, and Great Britain, held July 17 to Aug. 2, 1945, adopted concrete decisions (with which France also associated itself) on the demilitarization, denazification, and democratization of Germany, along with decisions on German reparations and on a new Polish-German border along the Oder and Neisse.
True to its pledge as an ally, the USSR entered the war against imperialist Japan on Aug. 9, 1945. Soviet forces (under commander in chief Marshal A. M. Vasilevskii) routed the 1-million-strong Kwantung Army and liberated Manchuria, the northern part of Korea, the southern part of Sakhalin, and the Kuril Islands (Manchurian Operation of 1945). Soviet forces from three fronts, the Pacific Fleet, the Amur Flotilla, and the forces of the Mongolian People’s Republic participated in the operations (see map). On Sept. 2, 1945, Japan surrendered unconditionally. The victory of the Soviet armed forces in the Far East created favorable conditions for China, Korea, and Vietnam to embark on a successful struggle for democracy and national independence. World War II concluded with the total defeat of the aggressors.
Table 5. Number of troops and weapons of the Soviet Army and the fascist German Army during the Great Patriotic War 1	Table 5. Number of troops and weapons of the Soviet Army and the fascist German Army during the Great Patriotic War 1	Table 5. Number of troops and weapons of the Soviet Army and the fascist German Army during the Great Patriotic War 1	Table 5. Number of troops and weapons of the Soviet Army and the fascist German Army during the Great Patriotic War 1	Table 5. Number of troops and weapons of the Soviet Army and the fascist German Army during the Great Patriotic War 1
 	Personnel of active fronts and fleets 	Field guns and infantry mortars 	Tanks and self-propelled guns 	Combat aircraft
1 Number above the line, data for Soviet Army; number below the line, data for fascist German Army 	1 Number above the line, data for Soviet Army; number below the line, data for fascist German Army 	1 Number above the line, data for Soviet Army; number below the line, data for fascist German Army 	1 Number above the line, data for Soviet Army; number below the line, data for fascist German Army 	1 Number above the line, data for Soviet Army; number below the line, data for fascist German Army
2Excluding navy 	2Excluding navy 	2Excluding navy 	2Excluding navy 	2Excluding navy
3Only tanks and planes of new types are counted 	3Only tanks and planes of new types are counted 	3Only tanks and planes of new types are counted 	3Only tanks and planes of new types are counted 	3Only tanks and planes of new types are counted
4Exluding navy and antiaircraft forces 	4Exluding navy and antiaircraft forces 	4Exluding navy and antiaircraft forces 	4Exluding navy and antiaircraft forces 	4Exluding navy and antiaircraft forces
5Soviet Army data given excluding forces of the Leningrad Front and the 37th Army 	5Soviet Army data given excluding forces of the Leningrad Front and the 37th Army 	5Soviet Army data given excluding forces of the Leningrad Front and the 37th Army 	5Soviet Army data given excluding forces of the Leningrad Front and the 37th Army 	5Soviet Army data given excluding forces of the Leningrad Front and the 37th Army
June 19412 ............... 	 	 	 	
December 19412 ............... 	 	 	 	
May 19424 ............... 	 	 	 	
November 1942 ............... 	 	 	 	
July 1943 ............... 	 	 	 	
January 1944 ............... 	 	 	 	
June 1944 ............... 	 	 	 	
January 19455 ............... 	 	 	 	
In the Great Patriotic War, the USSR achieved a victory of world historical importance, strengthening the security of its borders in the west and the east. In accordance with the decisions of the Potsdam Conference, the area surrounding Königsberg, with the cities of Königsberg (now Kaliningrad) and Pillau (now Baltiisk), became part of the Soviet Union. As a result of the peace treaty with Finland, the Barents seaport of Pechenga (Petsamo), along with the surrounding area, was returned to the USSR, which was also granted the right to lease the land and waters of the Porkkala Udd area. As a result of a decision of the Yalta Conference, in the Far East the southern part of Sakhalin and the adjacent islands were returned to the USSR; the Kuril Islands were also transferred to the USSR.
The Soviet Union not only succeeded in protecting its freedom and independence, it also played a decisive role in delivering the peoples of Europe and Asia from the threat of fascist enslavement. On the Soviet-German front, 607 enemy divisions were destroyed during the war, while British and American troops in North Africa, Italy, and Western Europe defeated and imprisoned only 176 enemy divisions. The Soviet Union incurred enormous losses: more than 20 million Soviet people perished during the war. World civilization was saved from fascism. Therein lies the greatest service of the Soviet people to humanity.
The Communist Party inspired and organized all the victories of the Soviet people and the Soviet armed forces in the war. Prominent party and state figures were involved in the most important aspects of the state, party, and military leadership. The party and its leaders united the forces of the nation and directed them to the complete defeat of the enemy. By the end of the war, the armed forces included more than 3.3 million Communist Party members—60 percent of the party’s total membership. About 3 million Communists perished at the front. However, despite the enormous losses, the party grew substantially. More than 5 million candidate members and more than 3.5 million members were accepted into the party during the war.
During the Great Patriotic War of 1941–45, the Soviet people became still more deeply aware that the Communist Party is the mind, the honor, and the conscience of our era. The selfless labor of the Soviet people in the rear went down in the history of the war, along with the heroic struggle on the front, as an unparalleled feat in the defense of the homeland.
The state figures involved in the production of armaments, ammunition, metal, fuel, and other matériel and with the organization of the war economy included B. L. Vannikov, V. V. Vakhrushev, P. N. Goremykin, A. I. Efremov, A. G. Zverev, V. A. Malyshev, M. G. Pervukhin, I. F. Tevosian, D. F. Ustinov, and A. I. Shakhurin. Among the scientists and designers who made major contributions in supplying the Soviet Army and Navy with high-quality armaments and matériel were A. A. Arkhangel’skii, A. A. Blagonravov, S. G. Goriunov, V. G. Grabin, V. A. Degtiarev, S. V. Il’iushin, V. Ia. Klimov, S. P. Korolev, S. A. Lavochkin, Artem I. Mikoyan, V. F. Tokarev, A. N. Tupolev, and A. S. Iakovlev. Scientists of all branches of knowledge played prominent roles in the victory over the enemy.
In the course of the war, Soviet troops displayed unsurpassed military skill and a tenacity, endurance, courage, and mass heroism unprecedented in history. The valorous deeds of the soldiers, officers, and partisans who immortalized their names through their selfless devotion to the homeland embodied the heroism of millions of Soviet people. Such were the heroic defenders of the Brest Fortress, Moscow, Tula, Leningrad, Kiev, Odessa, Sevastopol’, Stalingrad, Novorossiisk, and Kerch’; the pilots N. F. Gastello and V. V. Talalikhin; the soldiers A. M. Matrosov and Iu. V. Smirnov; the partisans S. A. Kovpak, A. F. Fedorov, N. I. Kuznetsov, K. S. Zaslonov, Z. A. Kosmodem’ianskaia, and E. I. Chaikina; and the Panfilov and Young Guard of Krasnodon. A total of 11,525 servicemen of the army and navy were awarded the lofty title of Hero of the Soviet Union; of these, 104 received the award twice. The deeds of the pilots A. I. Pokryshkin and I. N. Kozhedub, three-time Heroes of the Soviet Union, became legendary. More than 7 million servicemen were awarded various orders and medals of the USSR.
A number of talented Soviet military leaders played a major role in the Great Patriotic War, including A. I. Antonov, I. Kh. Bagramian, A. M. Vasilevskii, N. F. Vatutin, N. N. Voronov, L. A. Govorov, A. I. Eremenko, G. K. Zhukov, I. S. Konev, N. G. Kuznetsov, R. Ia. Malinovskii, K. A. Meretskov, K. K. Rokossovskii, V. D. Sokolovskii, F. I. Tolbukhin, I. D. Cherniakhovskii, and B. M. Shaposhnikov.
The balance of power in international affairs changed in favor of socialism as a result of World War II. The victory over fascism created favorable conditions for many peoples of Europe (Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary, the German Democratic Republic, Poland, Rumania, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia) and Asia (China, North Korea, and Vietnam) to embark upon the path of democracy and socialism. The world socialist system was formed. The national liberation movement of the peoples of the colonial and dependent countries assumed broad dimensions after World War II. India, Indonesia, Burma, Egypt, and other countries of Asia and Africa threw off the colonial yoke. The complete disintegration of the colonial system of capitalism began.
Subsequent development and consolidation of socialism. After the conclusion of the Great Patriotic War, the Soviet nation resumed peaceful construction. The party worked out a long-term postwar economic policy directed at strengthening the material and technical basis for socialism. The transition of the economy
from a war economy to a peacetime one was essentially completed in 1946.
The tasks of postwar reconstruction and the further development of the national economy were defined in the fourth five-year plan (1946–50), which was adopted on Mar. 18, 1946, by a session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. The plan’s principal goal was to reconstruct the regions devastated by the war and to reach and then to substantially surpass the prewar level of the national economy. The session adopted the law on the transformation of the Council of People’s Commissars into the Council of Ministers of the USSR (the State Defense Committee was abolished in September 1945). The delegates approved M. I. Kalinin’s request to relieve him of his duties as chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR because of illness. N. M. Shvernik was elected chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.
The fascist German invaders had inflicted enormous losses on the country. They had destroyed and burned hundreds of cities, more than 70,000 settlements, villages, and hamlets, about 32,000 industrial installations, and 65,000 km of railroads, and they had ravaged and plundered 98,000 kolkhozes, 1,876 sovkhozes, and 2,890 machine-tractor stations. The war had seriously damaged agriculture: the sown area had decreased by one-fourth, the cultivation of fields had deteriorated, productivity and the level of mechanization had decreased, and the able-bodied population had declined. The total material damage to the USSR amounted to 2,569 billion rubles (in prewar prices), including 679 billion rubles’ worth of goods pillaged and destroyed by the enemy. The USSR lost 30 percent of its national wealth. As a result, the country experienced great hardships. The population lacked the basic necessities—food, clothing, shoes, and housing. The ration-card system remained in effect.
The party directed the Soviet people toward the completion of the fourth five-year plan ahead of schedule. In the course of the five-year plan, 6,200 large industrial enterprises were reconstructed or built and put into operation, including the Dneproges hydroelectric power plant, the metallurgical plants of the south, and the Donbas mines. By the end of 1948, the country’s industrial production had reached the prewar level, and by 1950 the gross industrial product was 13 times higher than in 1913 and 72 percent higher than the prewar level of 1940 (compared to the plan’s goal of 48 percent). Capital investments in the national economy amounted to 48 billion rubles. Cities rose again from the ashes, and new settlements and villages were built; in the course of the five-year plan, 201 million sq m of total usable space were restored or newly built in the cities, urban-type settlements, and rural areas. This was a great feat of labor on the part of the Soviet working class, kolkhoz peasantry, and intelligentsia.
The restoration of agriculture proceeded amid difficult conditions. The grave consequences of the war made themselves felt. Moreover, there were poor harvests in 1946 as a result of a drought throughout much of the country. The February 1947 Plenum of the party’s Central Committee posed the task of developing agriculture. The transition of industry to a peacetime basis and the restoration and construction of plants for the production of tractors and other agricultural machinery made it possible to supply new equipment to agriculture. The limited possibilities for financing agriculture and providing it with material and technical supplies were reflected in its subsequent development. The party and the government sought to bring about a substantial organizational and economic strengthening of the kolkhozes. Overcoming the difficulties it faced, agriculture by 1950 had essentially overcome the consequences of the war, although it was still far from satisfying the country’s needs. The abundance of small kolkhozes hindered the growth of agricultural productivity. In the interests of the organizational and economic strengthening of the kolkhozes, they were enlarged: instead of the 123,700 kolkhozes that had existed in early 1950, by 1953 there were 93,300.
The restoration and further development of industry and the improvement of agricultural productivity were accompanied by a rise in the material and cultural standard of living of the people. Of considerable importance were the monetary reform and the abolition of the ration-card system (December 1947), as well as the fourfold decrease in prices on industrial goods and foodstuffs. As a result, the purchasing power of the ruble rose and the real wages of the working people increased.
In the period 1946–50, the people of the Baltic republics, Moldavia, the western parts of the Ukraine, and Byelorussia succeeded in reconstructing, with the aid of the fraternal peoples of the USSR, the national economy and creating the economic basis for socialism. A radical restructuring of the entire sociopolitical, economic, and cultural life was carried out in this part of the USSR, as well as socialist industrialization and, in 1949–50, the collectivization of agriculture. Socialist production relations were established in the cities and countryside.
During the postwar era, science began to play an increasingly important role in the development of the national economy and the strengthening of the country’s defensive capabilities. Soviet science moved to the forefront of the scientific and technological revolution that had emerged in the world. Soviet scientists achieved major successes in nuclear physics, rocket technology, electronics, and radio engineering. They successfully solved problems in atomic energy and engineering (I. V. Kurchatov and S. P. Korolev). The first atomic bomb in the USSR was tested in 1949, and the first hydrogen bomb in 1953. The USA’s monopoly on nuclear weapons was thus eliminated. The Soviet armed forces began to be supplied with nuclear weapons.
The results of the country’s political, economic, and cultural development after the Eighteenth Congress of the ACP(B) (1939) were summed up by the party’s Nineteenth Congress (October 1952), the first congress after the war. It noted the realignment of the world’s class forces into two principal worldwide sociopolitical camps—the socialist and the capitalist. It adopted directives for the fifth five-year plan for the development of the national economy of the USSR in the period 1951–55, outlining a program for the further development of all the branches of the national economy on the basis of the preferential development of heavy industry. The congress devoted particular attention to the further realization of Lenin’s plan for electrification. The construction of the Kuibyshev (capacity, 2,100 megawatts) and Stalingrad (2,310 megawatts) hydroelectric power plants on the Volga, which was of great significance for the national economy, was planned and carried out. The Ust’-Kamenogorsk, Kama, Gorky, and Mingechaur hydroelectric power plants came on line. Construction was begun on the Kakhovka and Novosibirsk hydroelectric power plants. Measures to increase the mechanization of agriculture, raise yields, and expand the livestock population were outlined.
The congress adopted a resolution changing the name of the party, which thereafter became known as the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). The Politburo of the Central Committee was reorganized into the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU.
Shortly after the party’s Nineteenth Congress, Stalin, general secretary of the CPSU and chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, died (Mar. 5, 1953). G. M. Malenkov was named chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. In September 1953, N. S. Khrushchev was elected first secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, and K. E. Voroshilov was chosen chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. N. A. Bulganin became chairman of the Council of Ministers in February 1955, followed by Khrushchev in 1958.
The party’s policies to consolidate and develop socialism were carried out amid an international situation that had changed after World War II. The international prestige of the Soviet Union was strengthened considerably. New forms of international relations developed between the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries. Bilateral agreements on friendship and mutual assistance were signed. The USSR aided the fraternal states politically and economically to restore and develop their national economies. The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) was created in January 1949. The USSR provided political and economic support to the peoples of Asia and Africa in their national liberation struggle and strengthened its friendship with countries that had achieved national independence. The balance of power in international affairs changed radically in favor of socialism. The socialist system acquired the decisive role in world development. The Soviet government continued developing its foreign policy on the basis of the Leninist principle of peaceful coexistence between countries with different social systems. The imperialist camp, headed by the USA, embarked on a cold war policy, adopting a course that led to the rearming of West Germany (from 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany), the unleashing of local wars (in Korea in 1950), the establishment of military bases aimed against the USSR and other socialist countries, and the expansion of the arms race. An aggressive bloc, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), was established in 1949.
The Soviet Union actively supported progressive world public opinion in its struggle for peace. The Soviet delegation repeatedly introduced resolutions in the UN on reducing the size of armed forces and weapons, banning weapons of mass destruction, eliminating military bases on foreign soil, and creating an effective collective security system in Europe. In March 1951 the Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopted a law on the protection of peace by which the advocacy of war was declared to be the gravest crime against humanity. The war in Korea ended in 1953 as a result of diplomatic action by the Soviet Union. On the initiative of the Soviet Union, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, and other countries, the international Geneva conference was convened in 1954, and the war in Indochina was ended. In the period 1956–58, the USSR steadfastly opposed the aggression of Great Britain, France, the USA, and Israel in Egypt. The USSR vigorously developed its international ties. In 1955 diplomatic relations were established between the USSR and the Federal Republic of Germany, and in 1956 diplomatic relations were restored between the USSR and Japan.
The peace-loving policy of the Soviet Union corresponded to the interests of all of the world’s progressive peoples and was supported by them. The Port Arthur naval base, which was used jointly by the USSR and the People’s Republic of China, was transferred to China in May 1955, and in January 1956 the Porkkala Udd naval base was transferred to Finland. On May 14, 1955, eight European socialist states signed the Warsaw Pact on friendship, cooperation, and mutual aid as a result of the growing military threat in Europe (the creation of NATO). The pact was an important landmark on the road to European security. In a declaration of Oct. 30, 1956, the Soviet government proposed a program for the strengthening of friendly ties with all socialist countries on the basis of complete equality, respect for territorial integrity, state independence, and sovereignty, nonintervention in domestic affairs, fraternal cooperation, and mutual aid.
The Twentieth Congress of the CPSU (Feb. 14–25, 1956) provided answers to many fundamental questions related to the domestic and international situation. A number of propositions on the implementation of the principle of peaceful coexistence with states having different social systems were substantiated. The conclusion that it was possible to prevent world war was drawn from a realistic assessment of the contemporary international situation. Lenin’s doctrine regarding the diversity of paths in the transition of different countries to socialism was given concrete form.
The congress summed up the results of the fulfillment of the fifth five-year plan and outlined future prospects for the development of Soviet society. The prewar level of development of the national economy was surpassed. In 1955 the gross industrial product was 24.6 times greater than in 1913 and 3.2 times greater than in 1940. The volume of production in 1955 exceeded that of 1950 by 85 percent (the plan’s goal was 70 percent). Capital investments in the national economy amounted to 91.1 billion rubles. About 3,200 new industrial enterprises began operation. The Lenin Volga-Don Ship Canal (101 km) was opened in July 1952. New technologies and high-production technological processes were introduced. Automation, telemechanics, radio electronics, and atomic energy for peaceful purposes were further developed and applied. On June 27 1954, the first atomic power plant in the world began generating electricity in the USSR. As a result of the fulfillment of the fourth and fifth five-year plans, the value of the fixed productive capital by 1955 had doubled in comparison with 1940, while the national income had increased by a factor of 2.8.
Much attention in the period 1951–55 was given to overcoming the lag in agriculture. In party and governmental resolutions, including that of the September 1953 Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU On Measures for the Further Development of Agriculture in the USSR and that of the February-March 1954 Plenum of the CPSU On Further Increasing Grain Production in the Country and Developing the Virgin and Disused Lands, important measures were worked out for the development of agriculture, first and foremost grain farming and livestock raising.
In the period 1954–56, 36 million hectares of virgin and long-fallow lands were brought under cultivation in Kazakhstan, Siberia, the Volga Region, the Southern Urals, and the Northern Caucasus. The newly created sovkhozes were primarily responsible for the development of virgin lands. Western Siberia and Kazakhstan became the most important granaries of the country. The opening up of the virgin lands was a great feat of labor by the Soviet people.
In the resolutions of the July 1955 Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU and especially of the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU (1956), the necessity for the acceleration of scientific and technological progress was emphasized, as was the necessity of applying in industry the advances of domestic and foreign science achieved in the course of the scientific and technological revolution. The directives for the development of the national economy for the period 1956–60 were adopted. The congress devoted much attention to further strengthening the Soviet social and state system.
The Twentieth Congress of the CPSU criticized in principle the manifestations of the cult of personality that had taken place and the associated violations of the norms of party life and the principles of party leadership and revolutionary legality. The party censured and overcame these phenomena alien to socialism. It acquired comprehensive experience, which enabled it subsequently to eliminate the negative consequences of subjectivism and libertarianism as well. The resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU On Overcoming the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences was published on June 30, 1956. It provided explanations of the causes that had given rise to the cult of personality and the nature of its manifestations and consequences.
The Central Committee of the CPSU and the Soviet government carried out extremely important political, economic, and ideological measures that promoted the strengthening of the Soviet social and state system, the development of the economy, and the improvement of the standard of living and the culture of the working people. The Central Committee of the CPSU and the Soviet government, along with local party organizations, worked hard to restore and further develop the Leninist norms of party and state life and the principles of collective leadership, intraparty life, and Soviet democracy. The participation of the working people in the administration of the state expanded, and the role of the soviets, trade unions, and other organizations in economic and cultural construction increased.
In the period 1956–57, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopted a series of decrees directed at further improving the life and work of industrial and office workers. Under the law on state pensions adopted on July 14, 1956, expenditures for pension insurance rose by a factor of more than 1.5. On July 31, 1957, the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR adopted the resolution On the Development of Housing Construction in the USSR. The achievements of Soviet science and technology were immense. On Oct. 4, 1957, the first artificial earth satellite was launched by the USSR, heralding the new, space age in the history of world science and technology.
The CPSU participated actively in the strengthening of the world socialist system and aided the development of the world communist movement. In November 1957, 64 fraternal Communist and workers’ parties held a conference at which the Peace Manifesto was adopted; also adopted at the conference was a special declaration on problems in the development of the world revolutionary process.
On Mar. 31, 1958, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopted the law On the Further Development of the Kolkhoz System and the Reorganization of the Machine-Tractor Stations. Underlying the law was the resolution of the February 1958 Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU. It was recognized that a full shift to a policy of the direct sale of tractors, combines, and other agricultural machines to the kolkhozes was a necessity. The machine-tractor stations were reorganized into repair and technical stations (1958).
The Twenty-first Congress of the CPSU (Jan. 27 to Feb. 5, 1959) drew the important conclusion that socialism in the USSR had won a complete and definitive victory. Owing to the implementation of the Leninist policy of the CPSU, the material and technical basis for socialism was so strengthened in the late 1950’s that the USSR had become a powerful, indestructible power, a reliable bulwark for the security of the world’s entire socialist community. The economic, scientific-technical, and defensive strength achieved by the USSR provided a sure guarantee against the restoration of capitalism. The congress defined the principal tasks in the economic, political, and ideological spheres. The practical task of creating the material and technical basis for a communist society was posed, an important task whose resolution was outlined by the seven-year plan for the development of the national economy of the USSR for the period 1959–65, which was ratified by the congress.
Period of developed socialism. The Twenty-second Congress of the CPSU, held Oct. 17–31, 1961, adopted the third program of the CPSU, a program for the construction of communism in the Soviet Union. The congress verified that the party program adopted by the Eighth Congress of the RCP(B) in 1919 had been completely fulfilled.
The new program of the CPSU was the result of the profound theoretical analysis and generalization of the experience of socialist construction in the Soviet Union and other socialist countries, as well as of the most important aspects of the current political, economic, and ideological processes. It defined the principal tasks of communist construction in the USSR: the creation of the material and technical basis for communism, the development of communist social relations, and the education of man as the active builder of a communist society. The program noted facts of importance in world history: “The state, which arose as a dictatorship of the proletariat, has turned at the present stage into a state of the whole people, an organ for the expression of the interests and will of all the people” (Programma KPSS, 1976, p. 101). The Communist Party, which emerged as a party of the working class, became a party of all the Soviet people.
After the congress, the struggle to fulfill the goals of the seven-year plan continued on a broader scale. The main tasks leading to the fulfillment of the party’s economic policy were defined: the maximum acceleration of scientific and technological progress in all branches of the national economy and the search for ways of increasing the effectiveness of all social production. Socialist competition played an important role in the fulfillment of the seven-year plan. The movement of shock workers and communist labor brigades, which originated at the Moscow-Sortirovochnaia Depot in October 1958, was the new form in which socialist competition spread, and the movement’s slogan became “To learn to work and live in a communist way.” The movement quickly spread throughout the country.
The country’s growing productive forces and the vast volume of capital construction objectively and logically necessitated improved scientific management of the economy, as well as improved methods of planning and economically stimulating production. However, as a result of the introduction of sovnarkhozy (councils of the national economy) in 1957, the management of the various sectors of industry was fragmented by dispersal among numerous economic regions. The unity of technological policy was disrupted and technological progress was hampered. Agriculture also experienced difficulties. Its development had been adversely affected by the manifestations of subjectivism in leadership, the violation of the economic laws of the development of socialist production, the disregard for scientific data and practical experience, and the violation of the principle of the material interests of agricultural workers and the proper balance between their social and personal interests.
The plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU held on Oct. 14, 1964, relieved N. S. Khrushchev of the duties of first secretary of the Central Committee and chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. L. I. Brezhnev was elected first secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU (from 1960 to 1964 he was chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and at the same time, from 1963, secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU). In October 1964 the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR appointed A. N. Kosygin chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. The November 1964 plenum of the party’s Central Committee acknowledged the necessity of raising the level of scientific leadership of the national economy, utilizing to the fullest extent the economic laws of socialism in developing production, and focusing on the principles of material and moral incentives. The Central Committee of the CPSU unequivocally condemned subjectivism and libertarianism in the resolution of economic problems.
The Central Committee of the CPSU and the Soviet government concentrated their efforts on the fundamental problems of improving economic relations and the management of the national economy, as well as on problems related to planning and the stimulation of production. A broad comprehensive program for the development of agriculture was worked out at the March 1965 plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU and at subsequent plenums. Capital investments were increased: the state allocated 41 billion rubles to agriculture over a five-year period and strengthened its material and technical basis. A firm plan for the procurement of agricultural products was developed, thus guaranteeing kolkhoz members set remunerations in cash and in kind for their work. The purchase prices for agricultural products were increased substantially. After the kolkhozes fulfilled the plan’s quotas, all produce remained in their control. Sales above the plan were carried out on a voluntary basis only, and at higher prices. The fulfillment of the measures worked out by the March plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU ensured the necessary conditions for the more rapid development of all branches of agriculture. In May 1966 the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR adopted the resolution On Raising the Material Incentives of Kolkhoz Workers in the Development of Public Production. Beginning on July 1, 1966, kolkhoz workers were guaranteed monthly remuneration for their work, based on the rates of the corresponding categories of sovkhoz workers, paid both in cash, at least once a month, and in produce. This greatly stimulated agricultural production.
The September 1965 plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU adopted the resolution On Improving Industrial Management, Improving Planning, and Increasing Economic Incentives in Industrial Production. National and Union-republic ministries were formed to improve the management of industry and accelerate scientific and technological progress. Along with centralized sectoral management of industry, the Union republics were given greater responsibility. The Central Committee of the CPSU defined the main lines to be followed in improving the techniques of planned management of the economy, as well as management methods on the enterprise level. These included raising the scientific level of state planning of the economy, extending the economic independence and initiative of enterprises, strengthening the cost accounting system, and increasing the economic incentives for production through such means as prices, profit, bonuses, and credit. The economic reform made the production collectives more responsible for and materially more interested in the results of their work.
The main goals of the seven-year plan (1959–65) were successfully fulfilled. Capital investments in the national economy amounted to 281 billion rubles, which was 22.2 billion rubles more than the amount invested in the period 1918–58. About 5,470 new large industrial enterprises were put into operation. The Volga Hydroelectric Power Plant, with a capacity of 2.5 million kilowatts, went on line, and the Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Plant began generating electricity. In 1965, 507 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity were produced, about 66.2 million tons of pig iron and 91 million tons of steel were smelted, and 578 million tons of coal and 243 million tons of petroleum, including gas condensate, were extracted. There were qualitative changes in industry: the technological level of industry was increased, new branches of production were initiated, and the relative share of electric production, machine building, metalworking, and chemical production increased. The volume of production increased. The educational level of the people and the vocational and technical skills of workers rose. Universal compulsory eight-year education was introduced in 1959. The material well-being and cultural level of the nation rose. Wages were regularized and increased. The pensions for many categories of working people were increased. Pensions were also instituted for kolkhoz workers. About 558 million sq m of total (usable) housing space and more than 3.5 million houses were built in kolkhozes.
Science and technology achieved major successes. In 1959 a Soviet spacecraft reached the moon with pennants bearing the state coat of arms of the USSR, while a subsequent spacecraft photographed the far side of the moon. On Apr. 12, 1961, for the first time in the history of mankind, Iu. A. Gagarin, a Soviet citizen, completed a space flight in the spacecraft Vostok. Subsequently, space flights were conducted systematically. In 1965, during the flight of the spacecraft Voskhod 2, the cosmonaut A. A. Leonov walked in space. In February 1966 a soft landing on the moon was carried out and its surface was photographed. The Lunokhod 1 lunar vehicle, directed from earth, reached the moon in 1970 and proceeded to study its surface.
The Twenty-third Congress of the CPSU, held between Mar. 29 and Apr. 8, 1966, summed up the results of the seven-year plan and outlined the future tasks in communist construction. The congress approved the work of the party’s Central Committee and the Soviet government in carrying out the scientifically based management of social development and adopted the directives for the eighth five-year plan for the development of the national economy of the USSR (1966–70).
The eighth five-year plan envisioned the industrial development of all social production through the utmost utilization of scientific and technological advances; it also envisioned the achievement of higher efficiency of social production, greater labor productivity, and continued substantial industrial growth. High, stable rates of agricultural development were projected, along with a substantial improvement in the standard of living of the people and greater satisfaction of the material and cultural needs of the working people. A convergence in the growth rates of the production of the means of production (group A) and the production of consumer goods (group B) was planned. Primary importance was attached to the acceleration of scientific and technological progress and the fundamental improvement of the quality of industrial and agricultural products.
The Twenty-third Congress of the CPSU introduced a number of changes in the Rules of the party. The new Rules provided for the Central Committee of the CPSU to elect both the Politburo of the Central Committee (instead of the Presidium) and the general secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU. L. I. Brezhnev was elected general secretary of the party’s Central Committee. In December 1965 a session of the seventh convocation of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR elected N. V. Podgornyi chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.
The international situation of the 1960’s was characterized by the further strengthening of the position of socialism. The international prestige of the socialist system rose immeasurably. In January 1959, Cuba abandoned the capitalist system as a result of a popular revolution and embarked upon the socialist path of development. In 1965 the socialist countries’ share of world industrial production amounted to approximately 36 percent, compared to about 27 percent in 1955.
The Communist Party and the Soviet government promoted the development and strengthening of the community of socialist countries in every way possible. The USSR contributed much to the industrialization of these countries. With its aid, more than 1,200 industrial enterprises were to be constructed in the socialist countries, of which 700 have begun operation. Soviet oil began flowing to the German Democratic Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia through the giant Druzhba (Friendship) main pipeline. The COMECON countries created a unified energy system, Mir (Peace), to serve the European socialist countries. Bilateral and multilateral economic ties and scientific and technical cooperation between the European socialist countries expanded substantially. National economic plans were coordinated, and the specialization of and cooperation in production, taking into account the interests of each country, were established. The role of COMECON increased, and the Warsaw Pact organization was strengthened.
Under the influence of the world socialist system and the powerful national liberation movements, the colonial system of imperialism crumbled. The majority of the colonial nations achieved independence: more than 70 new states were formed. On Dec. 14, 1960, upon the proposal of the USSR, the UN General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples. The USSR established extensive economic cooperation and trade and cultural ties with the vast majority of the developing countries of Asia and Africa. About 600 industrial and other projects have been built or are currently under construction with the aid of the USSR in these countries, including the Aswan High Dam on the Nile in the Arab Republic of Egypt and the Bhilai metallurgical combine in India, as well as more than 100 educational, medical, and scientific centers. The closest ties were established with countries that had embarked on the path of noncapitalist development.
The Soviet government has consistently supported the reduction of international tensions. At the same time, the USSR has rebuffed imperialist forces that have exacerbated the international situation. In 1961 the aggressive circles in the USA and the Federal Republic of Germany greatly increased their subversive activities in West Berlin against the German Democratic Republic. In 1964 the USSR concluded a treaty of friendship, mutual aid, and cooperation with the German Democratic Republic. In 1961 the USA attempted to mount an invasion of Cuba by Cuban counterrevolutionaries, which proved unsuccessful. The Soviet government made important contributions to ending hostilities between India and Pakistan. The USA organized the military intervention into South Vietnam, directed against the popular movement, and in 1964–65 expanded military operations in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. The Soviet Union provided the Democratic Republic of Vietnam with political, military, and economic aid. In 1970 the USA extended its aggression to Cambodia as well. The Soviet government and the governments of other socialist countries condemned the US intervention and declared their support for the national liberation forces of South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. In 1967 the Zionist ruling circles of Israel, supported by the USA, embarked on a war against Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, seizing considerable territory. The USSR and other socialist countries rose to the defense of Egypt and the other countries.
The USSR has consistently sought to limit arms and to put an end to the arms race unleashed by the imperialists. The Soviet government worked out a concrete program for ending the arms race, reducing armed forces, and banning nuclear weapons. The signing on Aug. 5, 1963, of a treaty by the USSR, Great Britain, and the USA banning the testing of atomic weapons in the atmosphere, in outer space, and underwater proved to be a major success for the foreign policy of the CPSU and the Soviet government. An absolute majority of countries associated themselves with the treaty. The Outer Space Treaty, which prohibited the use of outer space and celestial bodies for military purposes, was signed in 1967, and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, in 1968.
In 1967 the Soviet nation and progressive humanity celebrated the 50th anniversary of the October Socialist Revolution. The party and the government reviewed the great historic victories of the Soviet people over the preceding 50 years. As a result of a half century of creative activity, the Soviet nation succeeded in building a developed socialist society. The Soviet Union had been transformed into a highly developed socialist state, with a powerful industry and a large-scale mechanized agriculture. In 1967 industrial output was 73 times greater than in 1913, while agricultural output was three times greater. The introduction of the five-day work week for industrial and office workers was begun in March and completed by November 1967 in accordance with a decision of the Central Committee of the CPSU, the Council of Ministers of the USSR, and the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions.
The country’s relative share of world industrial production increased. In 1967 the USSR, which accounted for 7 percent of the earth’s population, produced nearly 20 percent of the world’s industrial output, compared to about 10 percent on the eve of World War II. In the period 1929–66 the average annual growth in industrial production was 11.2 percent in the USSR, compared to 4.3 percent in the USA and 2.5 percent in Great Britain and France. The Soviet Union assumed one of the leading places in the world with respect to the scale and rate of housing construction. During the years of Soviet power, 2.1 billion sq m of total (usable) space has been devoted to construction. Urban housing increased by a factor of 7.5 (1967). In the postwar years, fourfifths of the country’s population moved to new houses or remodeled old houses.
As a result of the active, peace-loving policy of the Soviet government, political, trade, and cultural relations were substantially improved with a number of capitalist countries, including France, Italy, and Japan.
The USSR devoted considerable attention to strengthening peace and security in Europe. At a conference of Warsaw Pact signatories in Bucharest in July 1966, the special Declaration on Strengthening Peace and Security in Europe was adopted, a document that took note of the stability of the existing borders of the European states, including those of the German Democratic Republic, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. Taking into account the aggressiveness of the imperialist countries, the USSR strengthened its armed forces, thus guaranteeing the peace and security of nations. The Soviet government has done everything possible to ensure peaceful conditions for communist and socialist construction in the countries of the world socialist system.
The Third All-Union Congress of Kolkhoz Workers, held in Moscow on Nov. 25–27, 1969, discussed and adopted new Model Kolkhoz Regulations (Rules), which granted the kolkhozes extensive rights in planning and in the organization and compensation of labor and the introduction of the cost accounting system.
Consistently adhering to the policy of proletarian internationalism, the CPSU expanded and strengthened its ties with all the communist and working-class parties. In the 1960’s the struggle of the working class of the capitalist countries intensified, and the international communist and working-class movement continued developing. The ranks of Communist party members grew steadily, with a total of 88 Communist parties on all continents numbering about 50 million fighters. The general direction of the communist movement was developed jointly by the fraternal parties at conferences held in 1957 and 1960 in Moscow. In the documents of the conferences, the most important political and theoretical propositions on the nature of the contemporary era and the tasks of the communist and working-class movement were formulated. Close political, economic, and cultural relations between the socialist countries emerged out of the jointly developed policy.
The principled, consistent policies of the CPSU with respect to the expansion and strengthening of ties and fraternal cooperation with the Communist and workers’ parties of all countries and with respect to the rallying of the world communist movement, combined with the active struggle against left and right revisionism, dogmatism, and nationalism, yielded positive results. The International Conference of the Communist and Workers’ Parties, attended by 75 delegations, met in Moscow on June 5–17, 1969. The conference adopted an important document, Tasks at the Present Stage of the Struggle Against Imperialism and United Action of the Communist and Workers’ Parties and All Anti-Imperialist Forces.
The year 1970, the 100th anniversary of the birth of V. I. Lenin, was a significant event in the history of Soviet society. The centennial celebrations sparked powerful labor enthusiasm among the industrial workers, kolkhoz workers, intelligentsia, and all working people of developed socialist society.
The Twenty-fourth Congress of the CPSU was held between Mar. 30 and Apr. 9, 1971. It summed up the eighth five-year plan (1966–70), a period of the dynamic development of the economy during which the volume of industrial production increased substantially (in 1970 industrial production was 92 times greater than in 1913), agriculture developed, and new frontiers of scientific and technological progress were conquered, all of which ensured a new upsurge in the prosperity and culture of the people. These were the years of the successful development of socialist social relations and Soviet democracy, the further flowering of the fraternal friendship of the peoples of the USSR, and the strengthening of the defensive capabilities of the Soviet state.
The Soviet people achieved new successes in the creation of the material and technical basis for communism. In the period 1966–70, 1,870 new major industrial enterprises and installations were put into operation. The national income rose 41 percent, amounting in the course of the five-year plan to 1,166 billion rubles, compared to 840 billion rubles in the seventh five-year plan. Industrial production rose 50 percent, while the productivity of social labor rose 37 percent. Industrial output in 1970 was approximately double that of all the prewar five-year plans (1929–40) combined. The average annual volume of agricultural production increased by 21 percent, compared to 12 percent in the preceding five-year plan.
The real per capita income of the population increased by 33 percent in the course of the five years, compared to 19 percent in the preceding five-year period. The average wage of industrial and office workers throughout the country rose 26 percent, while that of kolkhoz workers rose 42 percent. The retail trade turnover of state and cooperative enterprises increased by 48 percent. About 60 billion rubles were spent on housing construction, and more than 500 million sq m of housing were built (11,333,000 apartments); this is equivalent to the construction of more than 50 large cities, each with a population of 1 million.
The congress ratified the directives for the ninth five-year plan (1971–75). “The main task of the five-year plan,” the directives emphasized, “is to bring about a substantial rise in the material and cultural living standards of the people based on a high rate of development of socialist production, a rise in production efficiency, scientific and technological progress, and an accelerated growth of labor productivity” (Materialy XXIV s”ezda KPSS, 1971, pp. 239–40). The congress indicated the necessity of organically combining the achievements of the scientific and technological revolution with the advantages of the socialist economic system. It directed attention to the improvement of the utilization of production assets and capital investments, as well as labor resources. It also focused on lowering labor expenditures, improving the quality of products, and minimizing expenditures. The congress particularly stressed the need to accelerate returns on capital investments, to build and assimilate new enterprises and installations more rapidly, and to ensure maximum growth of production through the reconstruction and technological modernization of existing enterprises and increased labor productivity. It indicated the necessity of further improving the planning and management of the national economy and increasing its scientific level.
With respect to social policy, the congress assigned the party the tasks of further strengthening the unity of Soviet society, bringing closer together the class and social groups and all the country’s socialist nations (in the historical sense) and nationalities, steadily developing socialist democracy, involving the masses in public and state affairs, and raising the communist consciousness of the working people.
The congress developed and substantiated the foreign policy of the CPSU and the Soviet government as applied to the contemporary stage of world development. It worked out a program, known as the Peace Program, in the struggle to ensure peace and security between nations and to avert thermonuclear war. The Soviet workers, peasantry, and intelligentsia embarked on the fulfillment of the goals of the five-year plan, which was marked by the 50th anniversary of the formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The celebrations commemorating the anniversary were characterized by a new upsurge in the socialist competition of Soviet workers. At a special anniversary meeting, held Dec. 21–22, 1972, of the Soviet community, L. I. Brezhnev in his report “On the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics” gave a detailed exposition of the historical experience of the formation and development of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, providing an assessment of the, political, economic, and cultural path traversed by the first socialist multinational state in the world.
In 1972 the national income of the USSR was 109 times greater than in 1922. The industrial output increased by a factor of 320 in the course of five decades; the production of the means of production increased by a factor of 822, while the production of consumer goods increased by a factor of 101. Whereas in 1922, the year of the formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the Soviet Union accounted for only 1 percent of the world’s industrial output, 50 years later, in 1972, it accounted for 20 percent of the world’s total industrial output.
During this period, all the republics underwent considerable changes as a result of their successful political, national-state, economic, and cultural development. Between 1922 and 1972, the volume of industrial production increased by a factor of 306 in the RSFSR, 178 in the Ukraine, 353 in Byelorussia, 597 in Kazakhstan, 241 in Uzbekistan, 412 in Kirghizia, 520 in Tadzhikistan, 137 in Turkmenia, 151 in Georgia, and 506 in Moldavia. In 1972 industrial production in Latvia was 31 times greater than in 1940; in Lithuania, 37 times greater; and in Estonia, 32 times greater. The figures for the autonomous republics of the RSFSR are even more striking: in Bashkiria, for example, the volume of industrial production increased by a factor of 1,673 (compared to 1919), and in Tataria, by a factor of 1,207 (compared to 1922).
The 50th anniversary was celebrated under the banner of socialist internationalism.
The 1970’s marked a new stage in the development of international relations. The cold war and the arms race eased up, giving way to a reduction in international tensions and the threat of thermonuclear war. The Peace Program, worked out by the Twenty-fourth Congress of the CPSU, began to be translated successfully into reality, primarily as a result of the changes in the disposition of the world’s class forces in favor of socialism. The USSR and other socialist countries had a powerful economic and military potential at their disposal. The industry of the COMECON countries accounted for as much as one-third of the world’s production, compared to 19 percent in 1950. A comprehensive 15- to 20-year program for the further expansion of cooperation and for the development of socialist economic integration was adopted in 1971. The fraternal countries developed joint plans for the development of a number of branches of industry that encompassed all the stages of production, ranging from research and development to the sale of finished products.
At a series of meetings of the leaders of socialist countries held in the Crimea in 1971, 1972, and 1973, a unified foreign-policy strategy was worked out. The development of multifaceted cooperation with the fraternal countries was the most important aspect in the Soviet state’s foreign policy. The activation of the peaceful foreign policy of the USSR, which was coordinated with that of the other socialist countries, and the emergence of more realistic policies on the part of the governments of many capitalist countries made it possible to advance substantially the cause of strengthening peace and security between nations. The question of ensuring European security occupied a place of the highest importance.
The CPSU and the Soviet government put forth a constructive proposal: to proceed from the definitive recognition of the territorial changes that had resulted in Europe in the wake of World War II, to implement a fundamental turn in policy toward détente and peace in Europe, and to convene a Europe-wide conference and to guarantee its success.
In September 1971, after lengthy negotiations initiated by the Soviet government, the Quadripartite Agreement on West Berlin was concluded by the USSR, the USA, Great Britain, and France, which substantially improved the situation in the heart of Western Europe. An event of major importance in international relations was the conclusion of the treaties between the USSR and the Federal Republic of Germany (1970), Poland and the Federal Republic of Germany (1970), and the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic (1972); under these treaties the stability of the existing borders in Europe was consolidated (borders along the Oder and Neisse; boundaries between the German Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic of Germany) and the signatories renounced all territorial claims and the use of force in resolving international disputes. Franco-Soviet relations entered a new stage. The document Principles of Cooperation Between the USSR and France was signed in October 1971. The development of cooperation between the USSR and France and the USSR and the Federal Republic of Germany in many respects influenced the situation in Europe as a whole.
One of the major foreign-policy events of the first half of the 1970’s was the improved relations between the USSR and the USA. Several high-level meetings between the USSR and the USA were held in the period 1971–75. As a result, a number of documents were signed, including the Joint Declaration by the United States and the Soviet Union on Basic Principles of Relations Between Them (1972), the Treaty Between the USSR and the USA on the Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems (1972), the Agreement on Certain Measures With Respect to the Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (1972), and the Agreement Between the USSR and the USA on the Prevention of Nuclear War (June 1973; no time limit was stipulated). Thus, progress was achieved in an especially important area of Soviet-American relations: the creation of guarantees against the development of nuclear conflict and war in general.
However, reactionary forces actively opposed the reduction of tensions in international relations. Under their influence, the US Congress instituted discriminatory restrictions on Soviet-American trade and economic relations. Under these conditions, the USSR felt it was impossible to put into effect the Soviet-American trade agreement of 1972.
The considerable aid provided by the USSR and other socialist countries to Vietnam contributed to the victory of the Vietnamese people in the struggle against imperialist aggression. The USSR actively participated in the Paris Peace Conference on Vietnam (1973), which played an important role in the elimination of hotbeds of war in Southeast Asia.
The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe was an important event in international affairs. The idea of convening the conference was conceived by the USSR and other socialist countries. The first stage of the conference was carried out at the level of ministers of foreign affairs in 1973. The third and final stage took place in Helsinki between July 30 and Aug. 1, 1975, at the level of the top political and state leaders from 33 European states, as well as from the USA and Canada. The Soviet delegation was headed by L. I. Brezhnev. The heads of the delegations signed the Final Act of the conference, a document of utmost international significance. The principles of relations between states expounded therein created a reliable basis for the exclusion of aggression and any other forms of coercion from European international relations. The conference marked a new stage in détente, confirmed the inviolability of the existing borders in Europe, and created favorable conditions for the maintenance and strengthening of peace on the European continent. It proved to be an important step on the road toward the consolidation of peaceful coexistence in the world.
The Twenty-fifth Congress of the CPSU, which was held from Feb. 24 to Mar. 5, 1976, demonstrated the vast scope and great depth of the creative revolutionary accomplishments of the Soviet people. The congress summed up the ninth five-year plan and affirmed the guidelines of the development of the national economy of the USSR for the period 1976–80. It verified that the main socioeconomic tasks of the ninth five-year plan had been resolved. The Soviet Union had taken a large, new step in creating the material and technical basis for communism, in raising the standard of living of the people, and in guaranteeing their security.
More than 500 billion rubles were invested in all branches of industry in the period 1971–75. This made it possible to increase the fixed production assets by a factor of 1.5 between 1970 and 1975 and the volume of industrial production by 43 percent. By 1975, the Soviet Union was the world’s leading producer of coal (701 million tons), iron ore (233 million tons), and oil (491 million tons, including gas condensate), as well as of steel (141 million tons), cement (122 million tons), mineral fertilizers (90 million tons), tractors, and diesel and electric locomotives. In industry alone, about 2,000 large enterprises and numerous installations equipped with modern technology were put into operation. About 43 percent of the fixed production assets of the national economy were renewed.
Major successes in improving production efficiency were achieved. Scientific and technological progress was accelerated. An 84-percent increase in industrial production and a 77-percent increase in construction were achieved as a result of increased labor productivity.
In the period 1971–75, the USSR forged ahead in the economic competition with the developed capitalist countries. The output of industrial products in the Soviet Union increased by an average of 7.4 percent a year, compared to 1.2 percent in the USA and the Common Market countries. A look at a longer period, 1950–75, is revealing. Over these 25 years, the average annual growth in the USSR and other COMECON socialist countries was 9.6 percent, while in the developed capitalist countries it was 4.6 percent. The long-term, comprehensive program for the development of agriculture worked out by the party was consistently translated into reality. The technical reequipment of agriculture and the strengthening of the economy of the kolkhozes and sovkhozes continued. Much land reclamation was carried out, and the specialization of agricultural production was expanded. In the course of the period 1971–75, more than 131 billion rubles were invested in agriculture, which obtained 1.7 million tractors, about 450,000 grain-harvesting combines, and more than 1.1 million trucks. In the course of the eighth and ninth five-year plans, the kolkhozes and sovkhozes obtained more than 3 million tractors, 900,000 grain-harvesting combines, and 1.8 million trucks and specialized motor vehicles. Despite extremely difficult climatic conditions (unprecedented droughts in 1972 and 1975), the average annual volume of agricultural production increased by 13 percent in the period 1971–75. The average annual grain harvest increased by 14 million tons, and the harvest of raw cotton, by 26 percent. Although agricultural output on the whole was lower than the goals set by the ninth five-year plan, the development of socialist agriculture moved ahead, a result of the realization of the Party’s well-thought-out agrarian policy.
Foreign economic ties were developed further: the volume of foreign trade rose, from 22 billion rubles in 1970 to 51 billion rubles in 1975.
The social program outlined by the Twenty-fourth Congress of the CPSU was successfully carried out by the ninth five-year plan. There was a substantial increase in the standard of living of the people. The average monthly wages of industrial and office workers rose by 20 percent over the five-year plan, reaching 146 rubles; including payments and benefits from social funds, the figure amounted to 198 rubles. Payment to kolkhoz workers rose by 23 percent over the period of the five-year plan. The retail trade turnover of state and cooperative enterprises rose by 36 percent. Sales of automobiles alone to private individuals reached nearly 1 million a year, which was nearly eight times higher than in 1970. Housing construction developed intensively. More than 11 million apartments and individual houses were constructed, thus making it possible to improve the living conditions of 56 million Soviet citizens. The realization of the goal of one family to an apartment was begun. The life of the people changed unrecognizably. Nearly all the kolkhozes and sovkhozes were electrified. About 99 percent of kolkhoz households and the households of sovkhoz industrial and office workers were provided with electricity. This made it possible for people everywhere to have televisions, radios, washing machines, and refrigerators. In many respects, the living conditions of the rural population began to approach those of urban residents.
All the Union republics achieved major successes in developing their economies and raising the standard of living of the population (see).
The Twenty-fifth Congress of the CPSU concretized and developed the principled directives of the party’s economic policy under the conditions of a developed socialist society for the next five-year period and future years. Having carried out the tasks of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the Soviet state became a state of all the people, expressing the interests and will of all the Soviet people, a new historical community based on an alliance of the working class, kolkhoz peasantry, and intelligentsia, with the working class playing the leading role, and on the friendship of all the country’s nations and nationalities. The main tendency in the development of the social structure of mature socialism is the gradual transition from class differentiation to social uniformity. In the nonmaterial sphere, inherent in developed socialism are the dominance of Marxist-Leninist ideology and a high educational and cultural level. The leading and directing force of society in developed socialism is the Communist Party.
Pivotal to the party’s economic strategy in the new stage was the further growth of the country’s economic strength, the expansion and basic renewal of production assets, and the assurance of steady, balanced growth of heavy industry. The main task of the tenth five-year plan was the consistent implementation of the policy of the CPSU and the Soviet government directed at raising the material and cultural standard of living of the people through the dynamic, well-proportioned development of social production, increased production efficiency, the acceleration of scientific and technological progress, and the improvement of labor productivity and the quality of work in all branches of the national economy. The tenth five-year plan was one of efficiency and quality. The party congress devoted much attention to problems related to the management of the economy and the improvement of planning. In the tenth five-year plan, the volume of capital investment in the national economy was expected to amount to 630 billion rubles, which would constitute an increase of 25 percent. Of this amount, 172 billion rubles, that is, more than one-fourth of the total capital investment, was to be allocated to agriculture. This is 41 billion rubles more than the amount allocated in the ninth five-year plan (see).
The program for the further struggle for peace and international cooperation outlined by the Twenty-fifth Congress of the CPSU envisioned the assurance of peaceful conditions for communist construction, the development of the world socialist system, and the deliverance of humanity from wars of extermination.
An important event in the political history of the Soviet state was the adoption of a new constitution of the USSR, a constitution of a developed socialist society, on Oct. 7, 1977, by the extraordinary seventh session of the ninth convocation of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.
The Soviet state is confidently forging ahead on the path of the construction of a communist society.
A. L. MONGAIT (primitive communal system), D. B. SHELOV (slaveholding system), A. M. SAKHAROV (feudal system to the early 17th century), M. IA. VOLKOV (feudal system of the 17th century to the mid-19th century), K. N. TARNOVSKII (capitalist system), G. N. GOLIKOV and M. I. KUZNETSOV (era of socialism)
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Nationalities policy
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Lenin, V. I. Voprosy natsional’noi politiki i proletarskogo internatsionalizma (collection). Moscow [1965].Kozlov, V. I. Natsional’nosti SSSR. Moscow, 1975.Likholat, A. V. Sodruzhestvo narodov SSSR v bor’be za postroenie sotsializma, 1917–1937. Moscow, 1976.Mnatsakanian, A. N. Lenin i reshenie natsional’nogo voprosa v SSSR. Yerevan, 1970.Tadevosian, E. V. V. I. Lenin o gosudarstvennykh formakh resheniia natsional’nogo voprosa v SSSR. Moscow, 1970.
Formirovanie sotsialisticheskikh natsii v SSSR. Moscow, 1962.
Economic construction
===SOURCES===
Lenin, V. I. O gosudarstvennom kapitalizme (collection). Moscow, 1957.Lenin, V. I. O distsipline (collection). Moscow, 1971.Lenin, V. I. O nauchnoi organizatsii truda (collection). Moscow, 1970.Lenin, V. I. O printsipakh sotsialisticheskogo khoziaistvovaniia (collection). Moscow, 1964.
Resheniia partii i pravitel’stva po khoziaistvennym voprosam (collection of documents), vols. 1–10. Moscow, 1967–76.
Sotsialisticheskoe sorevnovanie v SSSR, 1918–1964: Dok-ty i mat-ly profsoiuzov. [Moscow] 1965.
===REFERENCES===
Leninskii plan sotsialisticheskoi industrializatsii i ego osushchestvlenie. Moscow, 1969.Leninskii kooperativnyi plan i bor’ba partii za ego osushchestvlenie. Moscow, 1969.
Bratskoe sodruzhestvo soiuznykh respublik v razvitii narodnogo khoziaistva SSSR, 1917–1971 gg. Moscow, 1973.Venediktov, A. V. Organizatsiia gosudarstvennoi promyshlennosti v SSSR, vols. 1–2. Leningrad, 1957–1961.Zhimerin, D. G. Istoriia elektrifikatsii SSSR. Moscow, 1962.Lel’chuk, V. S. Sotsialisticheskaia industrializatsiia SSSR i ee osveshchenie v sovetskoi istoriografii. Moscow, 1975.Strumilin, S. G. Ocherki sotsialisticheskoi ekonomiki SSSR (1929–1959 gg.). Moscow, 1959.Chinchikov, A. M. Sovetskaia istoriografiia sotsialisticheskogo preobrazovaniia sel’skogo khoziaistva SSSR. Moscow, 1971.
Ekonomicheskaia istoriia SSSR, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1967.
Elektrifikatsiia SSSR. Moscow, 1970.
Ekonomicheskaia zhizn’ SSSR: Khronika sobytii ifaktov, 1917–1965, 2nd ed., books 1–2. Moscow, 1967.
Cultural construction
===SOURCES===
Lenin, V. I. O kommunisticheskom vospitanii (collection). Moscow, 1957.Lenin, V. I. O kul’ture i iskusstve (collection). Moscow, 1956.Lenin, V. I. O kul’turnoi revoliutsii (collection), 2nd ed. Moscow, 1971.KPSS o kul’ture, prosveshchenii i nauke: Sb. dok-tov. Moscow, 1963.Kalinin, M. I. O vospitanii kommunisticheskoi soznatel’nosti (collection). Moscow, 1975.Skvortsov-Stepanov, I. I. Izbrannoe. Moscow, 1970.
===REFERENCES===
Ermakov, V. T. Istoricheskii opyt kul’turnoi revoliutsii v SSSR. Moscow, 1968.Kabanov, P. I. Istoriia kul’turnoi revoliutsii v SSSR: Kratkii ocherk. Moscow, 1971.Kim, M. P. 40 let sovetskoi kul’tury. Moscow, 1957.
KPSS vo glave kul’turnoi revoliutsii v SSSR. Moscow, 1972.
Kul’turnaia zhizn’ v SSSR, fascs. 1–3: Khronika (1917–50). Moscow, 1975–77.
Kul’turnaia revoliutsiia v SSSR: 1917–1965 gg. Moscow, 1967.
Razvitie sotsialisticheskoi kul’tury v soiuznykh respublikakh. Moscow, 1962.Lunacharskii, A. V. Sobr. soch., vols. 1–8. Moscow, 1963–67.
International solidarity of working people
===SOURCES===
Lenin, V. I. O mezhdunarodnom rabochem i kommunisticheskom dvizhenii (collection). Moscow, 1967.
Delo trudiashchikhsia vsego mira: Fakty, dok-ty, ocherki o bratskoi pomoshchi i solidarnosti trudiashchikhsia zarubezhnykh stran s narodami Sovetskogo Soiuza. Moscow, 1957.
===REFERENCES===
Lenin i mezhdunarodnoe rabochee dvizhenie. Moscow, 1969.
Lenin i natsional’no-osvoboditel’noe dvizhenie v stranakh Vostoka. Moscow, 1970.
October Revolution and Civil War, 1917–20
===SOURCES===
Lenin, V. I. O Velikoi Oktiabr’skoi sotsialisticheskoi revoliutsii (collection), 2nd ed. Moscow, 1966.
Sed’maia (Aprel’skaia) Vserossiiskaia konferentsiia RSDRP(b): Protokoly. Moscow, 1958.
Shestois”ezd RSDRP(b): Protokoly. Moscow, 1958.
Sed’moi ekstrennyi s”ezd RKP(b): Stenograficheskii otchet. Moscow, 1962.
Vos’mois”ezd RKP(b): Protokoly. Moscow, 1959.
Vos’maia konferentsiia RKP(b): Protokoly. Moscow, 1961.
Deviatyi s”ezd RKP(b): Protokoly. Moscow, 1960.
IX konferentsiia RKP(b): Protokoly. Moscow, 1972.
Perepiska Sekretariata TsK RSDRP(b) s mestnymi partiinymi organizatsiiami: Sb. dok-tov, vols. 1–8. Moscow, 1957–74.
Protokoly TsK RSDRP(b): Avgust 1917–fevral’ 1918. Moscow, 1958.
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Velikii Oktiabr’: Sb. dok-tov. Moscow, 1962.
KPSS v bor’be za pobedu sotsialisticheskoi revoliutsii v period dvoevlastiia: Sb. dok-tov. Moscow, 1957.
KPSS v bor’be za pobedu Velikoi Oktiabr’skoi sotsialisticheskoi revoliutsii: 5 iiulia–5 noiabria 1917 g.: Sb. dok-tov. Moscow, 1957.
Kommunisticheskaia partiia—organizator pobedy sotsialisticheskoi revoliutsii: Dok-ty i mat-ly. Moscow, 1961.
Kommunisticheskaia partiia v period uprocheniia Sovetskoi vlasti: Dok-ty i mat-ly. Moscow, 1960.
Partiia v period inostrannoi voennoi interventsii i grazhdanskoi voiny: Dok-ty. Moscow, 1961.
50 let Velikoi Oktiabr’skoi sotsialisticheskoi revoliutsii: Dok-ty i mat-ly. Moscow, 1967.
Oktiabr’skaia revoliutsiia i armiia, 25 oktiabria 1917–mart 1918 g.: Sb. dok-tov. Moscow, 1973.
Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie v russkoi armii, 27 fevralia–24 oktiabria 1917 g.: Sb. dok-tov. Moscow, 1968.
Baltiiskie moriaki v podgotovke i provedenii Velikoi Oktiabr’skoi sotsialisticheskoi revoliutsii: Sb. dok-tov i mat-lov. Moscow-Leningrad, 1957.
Baltiiskie moriaki v bor’be za vlast’ Sovetov, noiabr’ 1917–dekabr’ 1918 (documents and materials). Leningrad, 1968.
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Voenno-morskoi revoliutsionnyi komitet: Sb. dok-tov. Leningrad, 1975.
Protokoly i postanovleniia TsK Baltiiskogo flota: 1917–1918. Moscow-Leningrad, 1963.
Bol’shevistskie voenno-revoliutsionnye komitety: Sb. dok-tov. Moscow, 1958.
Petrogradskii voenno-revoliutsionnyi komitet: Sb. dok-tov, vols. 1–3. Moscow, 1966–67.
Podgotovka i pobeda Oktiabr’skoi revoliutsii v Moskve: Dok-ty i mat-ly. Moscow, 1957.
Uprochenie Sovetskoi vlasti v Moskve i Moskovskoi gubernii: Dok-ty i mat-ly. Moscow, 1958.
Vtoroi Vserossiiskii s”ezd Sovetov rabochikh i soldatskikh deputatov: Sb. dok-tov. Moscow, 1957.
Dekrety Velikogo Oktiabria (1917–1918). Leningrad, 1967.
Dokumenty Velikogo Oktiabria: Faksimil’noe izdanie vazhneishikh dok-tov Oktiabr’skoi revoliutsii. Moscow, 1969.
V. I. Lenin i VChK: Sb. dok-tov (1917–1922). Moscow, 1975.
Iz istorii VChK, 1917–1921 gg.: Sb. dok-tov. Moscow, 1958.
Sovetskoe sodruzhestvo narodov, 1917–1922: Sb. dok-tov. Moscow, 1972.
Agrarnaia politika Sovetskoi vlasti (1917–1918): Dok-ty i mat-ly. Moscow, 1954.
K istorii plana elektrifikatsii Sovetskoi strany, 1918–1920 gg.: Sb. doktov i mat-lov. Moscow, 1952.
Natsionalizatsiia promyshlennosti v SSSR: Sb. dok-tov i mat-lov, 1917–1920. Moscow, 1954.
Rabochii klass Sovetskoi Rossii v pervyi god diktatury proletariata: Sb. dok-tov i mat-lov. Moscow, 1964.Lenin, V. I. Voennaia perepiska, 1917–1922 (collection). Moscow, 1966.
Lenin, V. I. Ob inostrannoi voennoi interventsii i grazhdanskoi voine v SSSR (1918–1920 gg.) (collection). Moscow, 1956.
Direktivy Glavnogo komandovaniia Krasnoi Armii (1917–1920): Sb. dok-tov. Moscow, 1969.
Direktivy komandovaniia frontov Krasnoi Armii (1917–1922 gg.), vols. 1–3. Moscow, 1971–74.
Iz istorii Grazhdanskoi voiny v SSSR, 1918–1922: Sb. dok-tov i mat-lov, vols. 1–3. Moscow, 1960–61.
Plamennoe slovo: Listovki Grazhdanskoi voiny (1918–1922). Moscow, 1967.
Sovetsko-germanskie otnosheniia ot peregovorov v Brest-Litovske do podpisaniia Rapall’skogo dogovora: Sb. dok-tov, vols. 1–2. Moscow, 1968–71.
Boevoe sodruzhestvo trudiashchikhsia zarubezhnykh stran s narodami Sovetskoi Rossii (1917–1922): Dok-ty i mat-ly. Moscow, 1957.
Proletarskaia solidarnost’ trudiashchikhsia v bor’be za mir (1917–1924): Sb. dok-tov. Moscow, 1958.
===MEMOIRS===
Antonov-Ovseenko, V. A. V revoliutsii. Moscow, 1957.Voroshilov, K. E. Rasskazy o zhizni, book 1. Moscow, 1958.Dybenko, P. E. Iz nedr tsarskogo flota k Velikomu Oktiabriu. Moscow, 1958.Mikoyan, A. I. Dorogoi bor’by, book 1. Moscow, 1971.Podvoiskii, N. I. God 1917. Moscow, 1958.
===REFERENCES===
Golikov, G. N. Revoliutsiia, otkryvshaia novuiu eru. Moscow, 1967.
Istoricheskii opyt Velikogo Oktiabria: Sb. st. Moscow, 1975.
Istoriia Velikoi Oktiabr’skoi sotsialisticheskoi revoliutsii. Moscow, 1967.Mints, I. I. Istoriia Velikogo Oktiabria, vols. 1–3. Moscow, 1967–73.
Velikaia Oktiabr’skaia sotsialisticheskaia revoliutsiia: Khronika sobytii, vols. 1–4. Moscow, 1957–61.
Bor’ba za ustanovlenie i uprochenie Sovetskoi vlasti: Khronika sobytii. Moscow, 1962.
Velikaia Oktiabr’skaia sotsialisticheskaia revoliutsiia: Malen kaia entsiklopediia. Moscow, 1968.Nenarokov, A. P. 1917, Velikii Oktiabr’: Kratkaia istoriia, dokumenty, fotografii. Moscow, 1976.Erykalov, E. F. Oktiabr’skoe vooruzhennoe vosstanie v Petrograde. Leningrad, 1966.Ignat’ev, G. S. Oktiabr’ 1917 g. v Moskve. Moscow, 1964.Ignat’ev, G. S. Moskva v pervyi god proletarskoi diktatury. Moscow, 1975.
Oktiabr’skoe vooruzhennoe vosstanie: Semnadtsatyi god v Petrograde, books 1–2. Leningrad, 1967.
Velikaia Oktiabr’skaia sotsialisticheskaia revoliutsiia i mirovaia sotsialisticheskaia sistema. Moscow, 1969.
Velikaia Oktiabr’skaia revoliutsiia i mirovoe osvoboditel’noe dvizhenie, vols. 1–2. Moscow, 1958.
Mezhdunarodnoe znachenie Velikoi Oktiabr’skoi sotsialisticheskoi revoliutsii: Sb. st. Moscow, 1958.
Oktiabr’skaia revoliutsiia i mirovoi revoliutsionnyi protsess. Moscow, 1967.Frantsev, Iu. P. Mezhdunarodnoe znachenie Velikoi Oktiabr’skoi sotsialisticheskoi revoliutsii. Moscow, 1967.
Velikii Oktiabr’ v rabotakh sovetskikh i zarubezhnykh istorikov: Sb. st. Moscow, 1971.Vodolagin, V. M. Oktiabr’skoe vooruzhennoe vosstanie v sovetskoi istoricheskoi literature. Moscow, 1967.Gorodetskii, E. N. Novoe v izuchenii istorii Velikogo Oktiabria. Moscow, 1968.Zharkov, M. G. Protiv burzhuaznoi fal’sifikatsii istorii Oktiabria. Minsk, 1975.Igritskii, Iu. I. Mify burzhuaznoi istoriografii i real’nost’ istorii. Moscow, 1974.
CPSU
Anikeev, V. V. Deiatel’nost’ TsK RSDRP(b) . . . : Khronika sobytii (1917–19) [vols. 1–3]. Moscow, 1969–76.Astrakhan, Kh. M. Bol’sheviki i ikh politicheskie protivniki v 1917 g. Leningrad, 1973.
Bor’ba bol’shevistskoi partii za sozdanie politicheskoi armii sotsialisticheskoi revoliutsii: Sb. st. Moscow, 1967.Vorobtsova, Iu. I. Internatsional’naia deiatel’nost’ bol’shevistskoi partii v period podgotovki Oktiabria. Leningrad, 1975.Golub, P. A. Partiia, armiia i revoliutsiia. Moscow, 1967.Dubinin, A. S. Kommunisticheskaia partiia—vdokhnovitel’ i organizator vserossiiskogo vooruzhennogo vosstaniia. Moscow, 1973.Egorova, A. I. Partita i profsoiuzy v Oktiabr’skoi revoliutsii. Moscow, 1970.
KPSS v bor’be za massy v period podgotovki Oktiabr’skoi revoliutsii: Sb. st. Moscow, 1959.Kuvshinov, V. A. Partiia bol’shevikov posle sverzheniia samoderzhaviia (mart-nachalo aprelia l917). Moscow, 1975.
Nekotorye voprosy strategii i taktiki bol’shevikov v Oktiabr’skoi revoliutsii. Moscow, 1968.Petrov, I. F. Strategiia i taktika partii bol’shevikov v podgotovke pobedy Oktiabr’skoi revoliutsii (mart-oktiabr’ 1917 g.), 2nd ed. Moscow, 1964.Freidzon, S. A. Moskovskie bol’sheviki v bor’be za voisko v 1917 g. Moscow, 1965.Iakupov, N. M. Partiia bol’shevikov v bor’be za armiiu v period dvoevlastiia. Kiev, 1972.Vladimirtsev, V. S. Partiia—organizator razgroma kontrrevoliutsii na luge. Moscow, 1971.Lipitskii, S. V. Voennaia deiatel’nost’ TsK RKP (b), 1917–1920. Moscow, 1973.Shilko, K. P. Ideologicheskaia rabota Kommunisticheskoi partii vpervye gody Sovetskoi vlasti (oktiabr’ 1917–mart 1919 gg.). Minsk, 1975.
Social development
Baevskii, D. A. Rabochii klass v pervye gody Sovetskoi vlasti (1917–1921 gg.). Moscow, 1974.Volobuev, P. V. Proletariat i burzhuaziia Rossii v 1917 g. Moscow, 1964.Gaponenko, L. S. Rabochii klass Rossii v 1917 g. Moscow, 1970.Gimpel’son, E. G. Sovetskii rabochii klass, 1918–1920 gg. Moscow, 1974.Drobizhev, V. Z., A. K. Sokolov, and V. A. Ustinov. Rabochii klass Sovetskoi Rossii v pervyi god proletarskoi diktatury. Moscow, 1974.Kravchuk, N. A. Massovoe krest’ianskoe dvizhenie v Rossii nakanune Oktiabria. Moscow, 1971.Lisetskii, A. M. Bol’sheviki vo glave massovykh stachek (mart-oktiabr’ 1917 g.). Kishinev, 1974.Osipova, T. V. Klassovaia bor’ba v derevne v period podgotovki i provedeniia Velikoi Oktiabr’skoi sotsialisticheskoi revoliutsii. Moscow, 1974.
Rabochii klass—vedushchaia sila Oktiabr’skoi sotsialisticheskoi revoliutsii. Moscow, 1976.Selunskaia, V. M. Rabochii klass i Oktiabr’ v derevne. Moscow, 1968.Smirnov, A. S. Bol’sheviki i krest’ianstvo v Oktiabr’skoi revoliutsii. Moscow, 1976.Sobolev, P. N. Bedneishee krest’ianstvo—soiuznik proletariata v Oktiabr’skoi revoliutsii. Moscow, 1958.Trukan, G. A. Rabochii klass v bor’be zapobedu i uprochenie Sovetskoi vlasti. Moscow, 1975.Fediukin, S. A. Velikii Oktiabr’ i intelligentsiia. Moscow, 1972.Freidlin, B. M. Ocherki istorii rabochego dvizheniia v Rossii v 1917 g. Moscow, 1967.Chernobaev, A. A. Razvitie sotsialisticheskoi revoliutsii v derevne. Moscow, 1975.
Formation of the state
Andreev, A. M. Sovety rabochikh i soldatskikh deputatov nakanune Oktiabria. Moscow, 1967.Andreenko, E. Ia. Partiia bol’shevikov i Sovety v pervye mesiatsy diktatury proletariata. Rostov-on-Don, 1975.Gorodetskii, E. N. Rozhdenie Sovetskogo gosudarstva. [Moscow, 1965.]Iroshnikov, M. P. Sozdanie sovetskogo tsentral’nogo gosudarstvennogo apparata, 2nd ed. Leningrad, 1967.Ionkina, T. D. Vserossiiskie s”ezdy Sovetov v pervye gody proletarskoi diktatury. Moscow, 1974.Klopov, E. V., and E. I. Korenevskaia. Pravitel’stvo, rozhdennoe Oktiabrem. Moscow, 1974.Morozov, B. M. Sozdanie i ukreplenie sovetskogo gosudarstvennogo apparata. Moscow, 1957.Savitskaia, R. M. Ocherk gosudarstvennoi deiatel’nosti V. I. Lenina (mart-iiul’ 1918 g.). Moscow, 1969.Selitskii, V. I. Massy v bor’be za rabochii kontrol’. Moscow, 1971.
Sovety v period Oktiabr’skoi revoliutsii i Grazhdanskoi voiny, vols. 1–3. Moscow, 1967–68.Sofinov, P. G. Ocherki istorii VChK (1917–1922 gg.). Moscow, 1960.Tokarev, Iu. S. Narodnoe pravotvorchestvo nakanune Velikoi Oktiabr’skoi sotsialisticheskoi revoliutsii. Moscow-Leningrad, 1965.Khesin, S. S. Stanovlenie proletarskoi diktatury v Rossii. Moscow, 1975.Chistiakov, O. I. Stanovlenie Rossiiskoi Federatsii (1917–1922). Moscow, 1966.
Nationalities policy
Makarova, G. P. Osushchestvlenie leninskoi natsional’noi politiki v pervye gody Sovetskoi vlasti (1917–1920 gg.). Moscow, 1969.
Natsional’nyi vopros nakanune i v period provedeniia Velikoi Oktiabr’skoi sotsialisticheskoi revoliutsii, vols. 1–2. Moscow, 1964.
Armed forces
Andreev, A. M. Soldatskie massy garnizonov russkoi armii v Oktiabr’skoi revoliutsii. Moscow, 1975.
Voennye moriaki v bor’be za pobedu Oktiabr’skoi revoliutsii: Sb. Moscow, 1958.Grechaniuk, N. M., and P. I. Popov. Moriaki Chernomorskogo flota v bor’be za vlast’ Sovetov. Simferopol’, 1957.
Istoriia latyshskikh strelkov (1915–1920). Riga, 1972. (Translated from Latvian.)Kapustin, M. I. Soldaty Severnogo fronta v bor’be za vlast’ Sovetov. Moscow, 1957.Miller, V. I. Soldatskie komitety russkoi armii v 1917 g. Moscow, 1974.Petrash, V. V. Moriaki Baltiiskogo flota v bor’be za pobedu Oktiabria. Moscow-Leningrad, 1966.Kirillov, A. A. Armiia i sotsialisticheskaia revoliutsiia. Moscow, 1972.Khesin, S. S. Oktiabr’skaia revoliutsiia i flot. Moscow, 1971.Verkhos’, V. P. Krasnaia gvardiia v Oktiabr’skoi revoliutsii. Moscow, 1976.Kliatskin, S. M. Na zashchite Oktiabria: Organizatsiia reguliarnoi armii i militsionnoe stroitel’stvo v Sovetskoi respublike, 1917–1920. [Moscow, 1965.]Startsev, V. I. Ocherki po istorii Petrogradskoi Krasnoi Gvardii i rabocheimilitsii. Moscow-Leningrad, 1965.Toman, B. A. Za svobodnuiu Rossiiu, za svobodnuiu Latviiu: Latyshskie strelki i krasnogvardeitsy v pervyi god Sovetskoi vlasti. Moscow, 1975.Tsypkin, G. A. Krasnaia gvardiia v bor’be za vlast’ Sovetov. Moscow, 1967.
Defeat of the counterrevolution
Garmiza, V. V. Krushenie eserovskikh pravitel’stv. Moscow, 1970.Golinkov, D. L. Krushenie antisovetskogo podpol’ia v SSSR (1917–1925). Moscow, 1975.Gusev, K. V. Partiia eserov: Ot melkoburzhuaznogo revoliutsionarizma k kontrrevoliutsii. Moscow, 1975.Ivanov, N. Ia. Kornilovshchina i ee razgrom. Leningrad, 1965.Kapustin, M. I. Zagovor generalov. Moscow, 1968.Kanev, S. N. Oktiabr’skaia revoliutsiia i krakh anarkhizma. Moscow, 1974.Komin, V. V. Burzhuaznye i melkoburzhuaznye politicheskie partii v Rossii v 1917 g. Kalinin, 1970.Plaksin, R. Iu. Krakh tserkovnoi kontrrevoliutsii. Moscow, 1968.Ruban, N. V. Oktiabr’skaia revoliutsiia i krakh men’shevizma. Moscow, 1968.Spirin, L. M. Klassy i partii v Grazhdanskoi voine v Rossii (1917–1920 gg). Moscow, 1967.
Istoriia Grazhdanskoi voiny, 2nd ed., vols. 1–5. Moscow, 1938–60.Aleksashenko, A. P. Krakh denikinshchiny. Moscow, 1966.Vasiukov, V. S. Predystoriia interventsii. Moscow, 1968.
Iz istorii Grazhdanskoi voiny i interventsii, 1917–1922 gg.: Sb. st. Moscow, 1974.Inoiatov, Kh. Sh. Kratkaia istoriografiia Grazhdanskoi voiny v Srednei Azii. Tashkent, 1974.
Krakh pervogo nashestviia imperialistov na stranu Sovetov. Moscow, 1973.Kuz’min, N. F. Krushenie poslednego pokhoda Antanty. Moscow, 1958.Naumov, V. P. Letopis’ geroicheskoi bor’by: Sovetskaia istoriografiia Grazhdanskoi voiny i imperialisticheskoi interventsii v SSSR (1917–22). Moscow, 1972.Papin, L. M. Krakh kolchakovshchiny i obrazovanie Dal’nevostochnoi respubliki. Moscow, 1957.Plotnikova, M. E. Sovetskaia istoriografiia Grazhdanskoi voiny v Sibiri (1918-pervaiapolovina 1930). Tomsk, 1974.Poznanskii, V. S. Ocherki istorii vooruzhennoi bor’by Sovetov Sibiri s kontrrevoliutsiei v 1917–1918 gg. Novosibirsk, 1973.Tarasov, V. V. Bor’ba s interventami na Severe Rossii. Moscow, 1958.Kirienko, Iu. K. Krakh kaledinshchiny. Moscow, 1976.Polikarpov, V. D. Prolog Grazhdanskoi voiny v Rossii: Oktiabr’ 1917–fevral’ 1918. Moscow, 1976.
Economic construction
Avdakov, Iu. K. Organizatsionno-khoziaistvennaia deiatel’nost’ VSNKh v pervye gody Sovetskoi vlasti (1917–1921 gg.). Moscow, 1971.Gimpel’son, E. G. “Voennyi kommunizm”: Politika, praktika, ideologiia. Moscow, 1973.Gladkov, I. A. Ocherki sovetskoi ekonomiki, 1917–1920 gg. Moscow, 1956.Davydov, M. I. Bor’ba za khleb: Prodovol’stvennaia politika Kommunisticheskoi partii i Sovetskogo gosudarstva v gody Grazhdanskoi voiny (1917–1920). Moscow, 1971.Zybkovets, V. F. Natsionalizatsiia monastyrskikh imushchestv v Sovetskoi Rossii. Moscow, 1975.Ignatenko, T. A. Sovetskaia istoriografiia rabochego kontrolia i natsionalizatsii promyshlennosti v SSSR. Moscow, 1971.Kabanov, V. V. Oktiabr’skaia revoliutsiia i kooperatsiia (1917–mart 1919 g.). Moscow, 1973.Kovalenko, D. A. Oboronnaia promyshlennost’ Sovetskoi Rossii v 1918–1920 gg. Moscow, 1970.Kozochkina, E. D. Iz istorii organizatsii upravleniia promyshlennost’iu, 1918–1921 gg. Moscow, 1964.Kosmachev, K. N. Kommunisticheskaia partiia—rukovoditel’ sotsialisticheskoi revoliutsii v derevne (1918 g.). Smolensk, 1970.Pershin, P. N. Agrarnaia revoliutsiia v Rossii, vol. 2: Agrarnye preobrazovaniia Velikoi Oktiabr’skoi sotsialisticheskoi revoliutsii (1917–1918 gg.). Moscow, 1966.Strizhkov, Iu. K. Prodovol’stvennye otriady v gody Grazhdanskoi voiny i inostrannoi interventsii 1917–1921 gg. Moscow, 1973.Fain, L. E. Istoriia razrabotki V. I. Leninym kooperativnogo plana. Moscow, 1970.Sharapov, G. V. Razreshenie agrarnogo voprosa v Rossii posle pobedy Oktiabr’skoi revoliutsii. Moscow, 1961.Shlikhter, A. G. Agrarnyi vopros i prodovol’stvennaia politika v pervye gody Sovetskoi vlasti. Moscow, 1975.
Cultural construction
Bastrakova, M. S. Stanovlenie sovetskoi sistemy organizatsii nauki (1917–1922). Moscow, 1973.Gorbunov, V. V. V. I. Lenin i Proletkul’t. Moscow, 1974.
Lenin i kul’turnaia revoliutsiia: Khronika sobytii, 1917–1923. Moscow, 1972.Smirnov, I. S. Lenin i sovetskaia kul’tura: Gosudarstvennaia deiatel’-nost’ V. I. Lenina v oblasti kul’turnogo stroitel’stva (okt. 1917 g.-leto 1918 g.). Moscow, 1960.Shishkin, V. F. Velikii Oktiabr’ i proletarskaia moral’. Moscow, 1976.
Foreign policy
Bakhov, A. S. Na zare sovetskoi diplomatii: Organy sovetskoi diplomatii v 1917–1922 gg. Moscow, 1966.Blinov, S. I. Vneshniaia politika Sovetskoi Rossii: Pervyi god proletarskoi diktatury. Moscow, 1973.Vygodskii, S. Iu. U istokov sovetskoi diplomatii. Moscow, 1965.Ganelin, R. Sh. Sovetsko-amerikanskie otnosheniia v kontse 1917–nachale 1918 g. Leningrad, 1975.Gvishiani, L. A. Sovetskaia Rossiia i SShA (1917–1920). Moscow, 1970.Oznobishin, D. V. Ot Bresta to lur’eva: Iz istorii vneshnei politiki Sovetskoi vlasti 1917–1920 gg. Moscow, 1966.Ol’shanskii, P. N. Rizhskii mir: Iz istorii bor’by Sovetskogo pravitel’stva za ustanovlenie mirnykh otnoshenii s Pol’shei (konets 1918-mart 1921 g.). Moscow, 1969.
Sovetskaia Rossiia i kapitalisticheskii mir v 1917–1923 gg. Moscow, 1957.Kheifets, A. N. Sovetskaia Rossiia i sopredel’nye strany Vostoka v gody Grazhdanskoi voiny (1918–1920). Moscow, 1964.Kholodkovskii, V. M. Finliandiia i Sovetskaia Rossiia, 1918–1920. Moscow, 1975.Chubar’ian, A. O. Brestskii mir. Moscow, 1964.Shishkin, V. A. Sovetskoe gosudarstvo i strany Zapada v 1917–1923 gg.: Ocherki stanovleniia ekonomicheskikh otnoshenii. Leningrad, 1969.Shtein, B. E. “Russkii vopros” na Parizhskoi mirnoi konferentsii (1919–1920 gg.). Moscow, 1949.
International solidarity of working people
Delo trudiashchikhsia vsego mira: Fakty, dok-ty, ocherki o bratskoi pomoshchi i solidarnosti trudiashchikhsia zarubezhnykh stran s narodami Sovetskogo Soiuza. Moscow, 1957.
Internalsionalisty: Trudiashchiesia zarubezhnykh stran—uchastniki bor’by za vlast’ Sovetov, vols, 1–2. Moscow, 1967–71.
Pod znamenem proletarskogo internatsionalizma: Bol’sheviki Petrograda i Pribaltiki v bor’be za Oktiabr’. Leningrad, 1972.Iakovlev, L. I. Druzhba, rozhdennaia Oktiabrem. Moscow, 1968.
===BIBLIOGRAPHIC MATERIALS===
Velikaia Oktiabr’skaia sotsialisticheskaia revoliutsiia: Bor’ba za vlast’ Sovetov v period inostrannoi interventsii i Grazhdanskoi voiny: Ukazatel’literatury 1957–1958 gg., fascs. 1–4. Moscow, 1959.
Velikaia Oktiabr’skaia sotsialisticheskaia revoliutsiia: Bor’ba za vlast’ Sovetov v period inostrannoi interventsii i Grazhdanskoi voiny: Ukazatel’ literatury 1959, fascs. 1–2. Moscow, 1960.
Velikaia Oktiabr’skaia sotsialisticheskaia revoliutsiia: Bor’ba za vlast’ Sovetov v period inostrannoi interventsii i Grazhdanskoi voiny: Uzkazatel’ literatury 1960–1961 gg., fascs. 1–3. Moscow, 1962.
Velikaia Oktiabr’skaia sotsialisticheskaia revoliutsiia: Bibliografich. ukazatel’ dokumental’nykh publikatsii. Moscow, 1961.
Sovetskaia strana v period Grazhdanskoi voiny (1918–1920 gg.): Bibliografich. ukazatel’ dokumental’nykh publikatsii. Moscow, 1961.
Narodnoe khoziaistvo SSSR v 1917–1920 gg.: Bibliografich. ukazatel (1917–1963). Moscow, 1967.
Kul’tura i kul’turnoe stroitel’stvo v Sovetskoi Rossii, oktiabr’ 1917–1920 gg.: Ukazatel’ sovetskoi literatury za 1917–1967 gg., fascs. 1–2. Moscow, 1971–72.
Socialist construction from 1921 to 1941
===SOURCES===
Desiatyis”ezd RKP(b): Stenografich. otchet. Moscow, 1963.
Biulleten’ [X] Vserossiiskoi konferentsii RKP(b), nos. 1–2. Moscow, 1921.
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XIV s”ezd VKP(b): Stenografich. otchet. Moscow-Leningrad, 1926.
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XVIII s”ezd VKP(b): Stenografich. otchet. Moscow, 1939.
Rezoliutsii XVIII Vsesoiuznoi konferentsii VKP(b). [Moscow] 1941.
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CPSU
===REFERENCES===
Vaganov, F. M. Pravyi uklon v VKP(b) i ego razgrom (1928–1930). Moscow, 1970.Ikonnikov, S. N. Sozdanie i deiatel’nost’ ob”edinennykh organov TsKK—RKI v 1923—1934 gg. Moscow, 1971.Moskalenko, I. M. TsKK v bor’be za edinstvo i chistotu partiinykh riadov. Moscow, 1973.Titov, A. G., A. M. Smirnov, and K. D. Shalagin. Bor’ba Kommunisticheskoi partii s antileninskimi gruppami i techeniiami v posleoktiabr’skii period 1917–1934 gg. Moscow, 1974.
Social development
Vedushchaia rol’ rabochego klassa v rekonstruktsii promyshlennosti SSSR. Moscow, 1973.Ivnitskii, N. A. Klassovaia bor’ba v derevne i likvidatsiia kulachestva kak klassa (1929–1932 gg.). Moscow, 1972.Matiugin, A. A. V. I. Lenin ob istoricheskoi roli rabochego klassa. Moscow, 1974.Poliakov, Iu. A. Perekhod k nepu i sovetskoe krest’ianstvo. Moscow, 1967.
Rabochii klass v upravlenii gosudarstvom (1926–1937 gg.). Moscow, 1968.Trifonov, I. Ia. Klassy i klassovaia bor’ba v SSSR v nachale nepa, parts 1–2. Leningrad, 1964–69.Trifonov, I. Ia. Ocherki istorii klassovoi bor’by v SSSR v gody nepa (1921–1937). Moscow, 1960.Filimonov, A. A. Ukreplenie soiuza rabochego klassa i trudiashchegosia krest’ianstva v period razvernutogo stroitel’stva sotsializma (1929–1936 gg.). Minsk, 1968.
Formation of the state
Genkina, E. B. Gosudarstvennaia deiatel’nost’ V. I. Lenina, 1921–1923. Moscow, 1969.Zlatopo’skii, D. L., and O. I. Chistiakov. Obrazovanie Soiuza SSSR. Moscow, 1972.Zibarev, V. A. Sovetskoe stroitel’stvo y malykh narodnostei Severa. Tomsk, 1968.Kukushkin, Iu. S. Sel’skie Sovety i klassovaia bor’ba v derevne (1921–1932 gg.). Moscow, 1968.Kuchkin, A. P. Sovetizatsiia kazakhskogo aula. Moscow, 1962.Likholat, A. V. Sodruzhestvo narodov SSSR v bor’be za postroenie sotsializma, 1917–1937. Moscow, 1976.
Mnogonatsional’noe Sovetskoe gosudarstvo. Moscow, 1972.Chugaev, D. A. Kommunisticheskaia partiia—organizator SSSR. Moscow, 1972.Iakubovskaia, S. I. Razvitie SSSR kak soiuznogo gosudarstva, 1922–1936 gg. Moscow, 1972.
Istoriia Bukharskoi i Khorezmskoi Narodnykh Sovetskikh respublik. Moscow, 1971.
Economic construction
Genkina, E. B. Perekhod sovetskogo gosudarstva k novoi ekonomicheskoi politike (1921–1922). Moscow, 1954.Kossoi, A. I. Gosudarstvennyi kapitalizm v usloviiakh stroitel’stva sotsializma. Moscow, 1975.
Novaia ekonomicheskaia politika: Voprosy teorii i istorii. Moscow, 1974.Poliakov, Iu. A. 1921-i: Pobeda nadgolodom. Moscow, 1975.
Postroenie fundamenta sotsialisticheskoi ekonomiki v SSSR, 1926–1932 gg. Moscow, 1960.Rogachevskaia, L. S. Likvidatsiia bezrabotitsy v SSSR, 1917–1930 gg. Moscow, 1973.
Sovetskoe narodnoe khoziaistvo v 1921–1925 gg. Moscow, 1960.
Sotsialisticheskoe narodnoe khoziaistvo SSSR v 1933–1940 gg. Moscow, 1963.Vilenskii, M. A. Po leninskomu puti sploshnoi elektrifikatsii. Moscow, 1969.Voskresenskii, Iu. V. Perekhod Kommunisticheskoi partii k osushchestvleniiu politiki sotsialisticheskoi industrializatsii SSSR (1925–1927). Moscow, 1969.Drobizhev, V. Z. Glavnyi shtab sotsialisticheskoi promyshlennosti: Ocherki istorii VSNKh, 1917–1932 gg. Moscow, 1966.Zhibarev, P. B. Industrializatsiia SSSR—velikii podvig sovetskogo naroda. Moscow, 1969.Danilov, V. P. Sozdanie material’no-tekhnicheskikh predposylok kollektivizatsii sel’skogo khoziaistva v SSSR. Moscow, 1957.Zelenin, I. E. Sovkhozy v pervoe desiatiletie Sovetskoi vlasti, 1917–1927. Moscow, 1972.
Ocherki istorii kollektivizatsii sel’skogo khoziaistva v soiuznykh respublikakh. Moscow, 1963.Selunskaia, V. M. Bor’ba KPSS za sotsialisticheskoe preobrazovanie sel’skogo khoziaistva (oktiabr’ 1917 g.–1934 g.). Moscow, 1961.Iakovtsevskii, V. N. Agrarnye otnosheniia v SSSR v period stroitel’stva sotsializma. Moscow, 1964.
Cultural construction
Esakov, V. D. Sovetskaia nauka v gody pervoi piatiletki. Moscow, 1971.Ioffe, A. E. Mezhdunarodnye sviazi sovetskoi nauki, tekhniki i kul’tury, 1917–1932. Moscow, 1975.Kuz’min, M. S. Deiatel’nost’ partii i Sovetskogo gosudarstva po razvitiiu mezhdunarodnykh nauchnykh i kul’turnykh sviazei SSSR (1917–1932 gg.). Leningrad, 1971.Kumanev, V. A. Revoliutsiia i prosveshchenie mass. Moscow, 1973.
Foreign policy
Akhtamzian, A. A. Rapall’skaia politika: Sovetsko-germanskie diplomaticheskie otnosheniia v 1922–1932. Moscow, 1974.Borisov, Iu. V. Sovetsko-frantsuzskie otnosheniia (1924–1945 gg.). Moscow, 1964.Volkov, F. D. Anglo-sovetskie otnosheniia, 1924–1929 gg. Moscow, 1958.Vygodskii, S. Iu. Vneshniaia politika SSSR, 1924–1929. Moscow, 1963.Grigor’ev, L., and S. Olenev. Bor’ba SSSR za mir i bezopasnost’ v Evrope (1925–1933 gg.). Moscow, 1956.Ioffe, A. E. Vneshniaia politika Sovetskogo Soiuza, 1928–1932 gg. Moscow, 1968.Kopanskii, Ia. M., and I. E. Levit. Sovetsko-rumynskie otnosheniia 1929–1934 gg. Moscow, 1971.Ol’shanskii, P. N. Rizhskii dogovor i razvitie sovetsko-pol’skikh otnoshenii, 1921–1924. Moscow, 1974.Osetrov, A. F. Sovetskii narod—revoliutsionnomu Kitaiu (1924–1927). Moscow, 1967.Peters, I. A. Chekhoslovatsko-sovetskie otnosheniia (1918–1934). Kiev, 1971.Sipols, V. Ia. Tainaia diplomatiia: Burzhuaznaia Latviia v antisovetskikh planakh imperialisticheskikh derzhav, 1919–1940. Riga, 1968.
Sovetsko-pol’skie otnosheniia, 1918–1945: Sb. st. Moscow, 1974.
Sovetsko-chekhoslovatskie otnosheniia mezhdu dvumia voinami, 1918–1939: Sb. st. Moscow, 1968.Trofimova, L. I. Polosa priznanii. Moscow, 1974.Furaev, V. K. Sovetsko-amerikanskie otnosheniia, 1917–1939 gg. Moscow, 1964.Khaitsman, V. M. SSSR i problema razoruzheniia: Mezhdu Pervoi i Vtoroi mirovymi voinami. Moscow, 1959.Kheifets, A. N. Sovetskaia diplomatiia i narody Vostoka, 1921–1927. Moscow, 1968.Volkov, F. D. SSSR—Angliia, 1929–1945 gg.: Anglo-sovetskie otnosheniia nakanune i v period vtoroi mirovoi voiny. Moscow, 1964.Zhilin, P. A. Kak fashistskaia Germaniia gotovila napadenie na Sovetskii Soiuz: Raschet i proschety, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1966.Kobliakov, I. K. Bor’ba SSSR za mir i kollektivnuiu bezopasnost’ (1938–1941). Moscow, 1975.Ovsianyi, I. D. Taina, v kotoroi voina rozhdalas’, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1975.Pankrashova, M., and V. Sipols. Pochemu ne udalos’ predotvratit’ voinu: Moskovskie peregovory SSSR, Anglii i Frantsii 1939 g. (dokumental’nyi obzor). Moscow, 1970.Popov, V. I. Diplomaticheskie otnosheniia mezhdu SSSR i Angliei (1929–1938). Moscow, 1965.Sipols, V. Ia. Sovetskii Soiuz v bor’be za mir i bezopasnost’, 1933–1939. Moscow, 1974.Tsvetkov, G. N. Politika SShA v otnoshenii SSSR nakanune vtoroi mirovoi voiny. Kiev, 1973.
===BIBLIOGRAPHIC MATERIALS===
Sovetskaia strana v period vosstanovleniia narodnogo khoziaistva (1921–1925): Bibliografich. ukazatel’ dokumental’nykh publikatsii. Moscow, 1975.
Great Patriotic War (1941–45)
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===MEMOIRS===
Bagramian, I. Kh. Tak nachinalas’ voina. Moscow, 1971.Vasilevskii, A. M. Delo vsei zhizni, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1975.
9 maia 1945. Moscow, 1972.Zhukov, G. K. Vospominaniia i razmyshleniia, 2nd ed., vols. 1–2. Moscow, 1974.Ignatov, P. K. Zapiski partizana. Moscow, 1973.Kovpak, S. A. Ot Putivlia do Karpat. Kiev, 1962.Kozhedub, I. N. Vernost’ Otchizne. Moscow, 1975.Kozlov, I. A. V Krymskom podpol’e. Moscow, 1972.Konev, I. S. Zapiski komanduiushchego frontom, 1943–1944. Moscow, 1972.Moskalenko, K. S. Na Iugo-Zapadnom napravlenii, books 1–2. Moscow, 1975.Novikov, A. A. V nebe Leningrada. Moscow, 1970.Pokryshkin, A. I. Nebo voiny, 5th ed. Moscow, 1975.Rokossovskii, K. K. Soldalskii dolg, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1972.Saburov, A. N. Otvoevannaia vesna, books 1–2. Moscow, 1968.Fedorov, A. F. Podpol’nyi obkom deistvuet. Moscow, 1975.Fedorov, A. F. Posledniaia zima, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1970.Chuikov, V. I. Gvardeitsy Stalingrada idut na zapad. Moscow, 1972.Shtemenko, S. M. General’nyi shtab v gody voiny, books 1–2. Moscow, 1968–74.
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Vsemirno-istoricheskaia pobeda sovetskogo naroda, 1941–1945 gg. Moscow, 1971.Deborin, G. A., and B. S. Tel’pukhovskii. Itogi i uroki Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1975.
SSSR v Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine 1941–1945 gg.: Kratkaia khronika, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1970.
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Partiino-politicheskaia rabota v Sovetskikh Vooruzhennykh Silakh v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny 1941–1945 gg. Moscow, 1963.Voznesenskii, N. A. Voennaia ekonomika SSSR v period Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny. Moscow, 1948.Kravchenko, G. S. Ekonomika SSSR v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny (1941–1945 gg.), 2nd ed. Moscow, 1970.
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Osvobozhdenie Iugo-Vostochnoi i Tsentral’noi Evropy voiskami 2-go i3-go Ukrainskikh frontov, 1944–1945. Moscow, 1970.Rumiantsev, N. M. Razgrom vraga v Zapoliar’e (1941–1944 gg.). Moscow, 1963.Samsonova, A. M. Stalingradskaia bitva, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1968.Utkin, G. M. Shturm “Vostochnogo vala”: Osvobozhdenie Levoberezhnoi Ukrainy i forsirovanie Dnepra. Moscow, 1967.
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Antipenko, N. A. Na glavnom napravlenii, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1971.
Krasnoznamennyi Baltiiskii flot v bitve za Leningrad, 1941–1944 gg. Moscow, 1973.Nadin, V. A., I. A. Skorik, and V. M. Shegerian. Artilleriia. Moscow, 1972.Peresypkin, I. T. Sviaz’ v Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine. Moscow, 1973.
Sovetskie tankovye voiska, 1941–1945. Moscow, 1973.Kirsanov, N. A. Po zovu Rodiny: Dobrovol’cheskie formirovaniia Krasnoi Armii v period Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny. Moscow, 1974.Kolesnik, A. D. Narodnoe opolchenie gorodov-geroev. Moscow, 1974.Bychkov, L. N. Partizanskoe dvizhenie v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny, 1941–1945 gg. Moscow, 1965.
Voina v tylu vraga, fase. 1. Moscow, 1974.Gorobets, G. Partiinoe podpol’e na Ukraine (1941–1944 gg.). Moscow, 1969.Logunova, T. A. Partiinoe podpol’e i partizanskoe dvizhenie v zapadnykh i tsentral’nykh oblastiakh RSFSR (iiul’ 1941–1943 gg.). Moscow, 1973.Semiriaga, M. I. Sovetskie liudi v evropeiskom Soprotivlenii. Moscow, 1970.Zagorul’ko, M. M., and A. F. Iudenkov. Krakh plana “Ol’denburg”: O sryve ekonomicheskikh planov fashistskoi. Germanii na okkupirovannoi territorii SSSR. Moscow, 1974.Ablova, R. T. Sotrudnichestvo sovetskogo i bolgarskogo narodov v bor’be protiv fashizma, 1941–1945. Moscow, 1973.
Boevoe sodruzhestvo sovetskogo i pol’skogo narodov: Sb. st. Moscow, 1973.Dubinskii, A. M. Osvoboditel’naia missiia Sovetskogo Soiuza na Dal’nem Vostoke. Moscow, 1966.Vysotskii, V. N. Meropriiatie “Terminal”: Potsdam, 1945. Moscow, 1975.Deborin, G. A. Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny (1941–1945). Moscow-Leningrad, 1948.Ivanov, L. N. Ocherk mezhdunarodnykh otnoshenii v period vtoroi mirovoi voiny (1939–1945 gg.). Moscow, 1958.Israelian, V. L. Diplomaticheskaia istoriia Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny 1941–1945. Moscow, 1959.Israelian, V. L. Antigitlerovskaia koalitsiia, 1941–1945. Moscow, 1964.Kulish, V. M. Istoriia Vtorogo fronta. Moscow, 1971.Reutov, G. N. Pravda i vymysel o vtoroi mirovoi voine, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1970.
===BIBLIOGRAPHIC MATERIALS===
Velikaia pobeda: Rekomendatel’nyi ukazatel’ literatury o Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine 1941–1945 gg. Moscow, 1975.
Velikii podvig: Rekomendatel’nyi ukazatel’ literatury o Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine Sovetskogo Soiuza. Moscow, 1970.
Geroi Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny: Rekomendatel’nyi ukazatel’ literatury. Moscow, 1970.Kumanev, G. A. Velikaia Otechestvennaia voina Sovetskogo Soiuza (1941–1945 gg.): Bibliografiia sovetskoi istoricheskoi literatury za 1946–1959 gg. Moscow, 1960.
Narodnoe khoziaistvo SSSR v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny (iiun’ 1941–mai 1945 gg.): Bibliografich. ukazatel’ knizhnoi i zhurnal’noi literatury na russkom iazyke (1941–1968 gg.). Moscow, 1971.
1946–76
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XXIII s”ezd KPSS: Stenografich. otchet, fascs. 1–2. Moscow, 1966.
XXIV s”ezd KPSS: Stenografich. otchet, vols. 1–2. Moscow, 1971.
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General works on USSR history
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Arkhiv Marksa i Engel’sa, vol. 1 (VI)-15, Moscow, 1933–73.Lenin, V. I. Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vols. 1–55. Moscow, 1958–65.
Leninskii sbornik, vols. 1–38. Moscow, 1924–75.
Vsemirnaia istoriia, vols. 1–11. Moscow, 1955–77—.
Istoriia SSSR: S drevneishikh vremen do nashikh dnei, v 2 seriiakh, v 12 t., vols. 1–10. Moscow, 1966–73—.
Ocherki istorii SSSR, vols. 1–9. Moscow, 1953–58.
Kratkaia istoriia SSSR, 2nd ed., parts 1–2. Leningrad, 1972.
Leninskie idei v izuchenii istorii pervobytnogo obshchestva, rabovladeniia ifeodalizma (collection of articles). Moscow, 1970.Liashchenko, I. I. Istoriia narodnogo khoziaistva SSSR, 3rd ed., vols. 1–3. Moscow, 1952–56.Strumilin, S. G. Ocherki ekonomicheskoi istorii Rossii i SSSR. Moscow, 1966.Khromov, P. A. Ekonomicheskoe razvitie Rossii: Ocherki ekonomiki Rossii s drevneishikh vremen do Velikoi Oktiabr’skoi revoliutsii. Moscow, 1967.
Istoriia gosudarstva i prava SSSR, parts 1–2. Moscow, 1961–62.Eroshkin, N. P. Istoriia gosudarstvennykh uchrezhdenii dorevoliutsionnoi Rossii, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1968.Gernet, M. N. Istoriia tsarskoi tiur’my, vols. 1–5. Moscow, 1960–63.
Ssylka i katorga v Sibiri (XVIII–nachalo XX v.). Novosibirsk, 1975.
Stranitsy boevogo proshlogo: Ocherki voennoi istorii Rossii. Moscow, 1968.
Istoriia voennogo iskusstva. Moscow, 1966.
Istoriia diplomatii, 2nd ed., vols. 1–5. Moscow, 1959–75.
Kratkii ocherk istorii russkoi kul’tury s drevneishikh vremen do 1917 g. Leningrad, 1967.
Istoriia russkoi ekonomicheskoi mysli, vols. 1–3. Moscow, 1955–66.
Istoriia filosofii v SSSR, vols. 1–5. Moscow, 1968–71.Nikol’skii, N. M. Istoriia russkoi tserkvi, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1931.
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Istoricheskoe kraevedenie. Moscow, 1975.
Istoriia Azerbaidzhana, vols. 1–3. Baku, 1958–63.
Istoriia armianskogo naroda, vol. 1. Yerevan, 1951.
Istoriia Belorusskoi SSR, 2nd ed., vols. 1–2. Minsk, 1961.
Istoriia Gruzii, vols. 1–3. Tbilisi, 1962–73.
Istoriia Kazakhskoi SSR, vols. 1–2. Alma-Ata, 1957–59.
Istoriia Kirgizskoi SSR, vols. 1–2 (books 1–2). Frunze, 1967–68.
Istoriia Latviiskoi SSR, vols. 1–3. Riga, 1952–58.
Istoriia Moldavskoi SSR, 2nd ed., vols. 1–2. Kishinev, 1965–68.
Istoriia tadzhikskogo naroda, vols. 1–3. Moscow, 1963–65.Gafurov, B. G. Tadzhiki: Drevneishaia, drevniaia i srednevekovaia istoriia. Moscow, 1972.
Istoriia Turkmenskoi SSR, vols. 1–2. Ashkhabad, 1957.
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Istoriia UkrainskoiSSR, vols. 1–2. Kiev, 1969.
Istoriia Estonskoi SSR, vols. 1–3. Tallinn, 1961–74.
Voprosy formirovaniia russkoi narodnosti i natsii (collection of articles). Moscow-Leningrad, 1958.
Ocherki istorii Kommunisticheskoi partii Azerbaidzhana. Baku, 1963.
Ocherki istorii Kommunisticheskoi partii Armenii. Yerevan, 1967.
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Ocherki istorii Kommunisticheskoi partii Uzbekistana. Tashkent, 1974.
Ocherki istorii Kommunisticheskoi partii Ukrainy, 3rd ed. Kiev, 1972.
Ocherki istorii Kommunisticheskoi partii Estonii, vols. 1–3. Tallinn, 1961–70.
Ocherki istorii Abkhazskoi ASSR, vols. 1–2. Sukhumi, 1960–64.
Ocherki istorii Adygei, vol. 1. Maikop, 1957.
Istoriia Bashkirskoi ASSR, 5th ed. Ufa, 1972.
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Ocherki istorii Karelii, vols. 1–2. Petrozavodsk, 1957–64.
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Istoriia Tatarskoi ASSR. Kazan, 1968.
Istoriia Tuvy, vols. 1–2. Moscow, 1964.
Ocherki istorii Udmurtskoi ASSR, vols. 1–2. Izhevsk, 1958–62.
Ocherki istorii Checheno-Ingushskoi ASSR, vols. 1–2. Groznyi, 1967–72.
Istoriia Chuvashskoi ASSR, vols. 1–2. Cheboksary, 1966–67.
Istoriia Iakutskoi ASSR, vols. 1–3. Moscow-Leningrad, 1955–63.
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Istochnikovedenie istorii SSSR: XIX–nachalo XX v. Moscow, 1970.
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Teoriia i praktika arkhivnogo dela v SSSR. Moscow, 1966.Cherepnin, L. V. Russkaia paleografiia. Moscow, 1956.
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Category:USSR
Category:History