Encyclopedia of Russian History

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flecting the distinction between those who owned

and controlled the means of production, on the one

hand, and those who lacked a share of ownership

and therefore were compelled to labor in the process

of production, on the other hand. That fundamen-

tal division had been reproduced in various forms

in the stages of European history, from ancient

slaveholding society through feudalism to capital-

ism. In capitalist society (which was the main sub-

ject of Marx’s writings) the crucial axis of social

conflict was between the capitalist class, or bour-

geoisie, and the industrial working class, or prole-

tariat. Marx attempted to demonstrate that the

antagonism between those classes would continue

to intensify, until the workers’ revolution would

destroy capitalism and usher in communism.

The dialectical mode of interpretation found a

new application in Marx’s analysis of the develop-

ment of the capitalist economy. Marx claimed to

have detected three “laws of capitalist develop-

ment”: the constant accumulation of capital, the

increasing concentration of capital, and the in-

creasing misery of the proletariat. Those laws

spelled the progressive polarization of society be-

tween an expanding number of impoverished and

exploited workers and a decreasing number of

wealthy capitalists. As the system became more

technologically advanced and productive, the mass

of the people in the system would become more

destitute and more desperate. The common experi-

ence of exploitation would forge powerful solidar-

ity within the ranks of the proletariat, who at the

height of the final crisis of capitalism would rise in

revolution and expropriate the property of the cap-

italist class.

Marx wrote far more about capitalism than

about the society that would follow the proletar-

ian revolution. He made it clear, however, that he

expected the revolution of the working class to so-

cialize the means of production and create a dicta-

torship of the proletariat. That dictatorship would

be the workers’ state, but its existence would be

temporary, as society moved from the first, tran-

sitional phase of communism to the higher phase,

in which the full potential of communism would

be realized, so that class differences would have dis-

appeared, the state would have died off, and each

person would contribute to society according to

personal ability and receive material benefits ac-

cording to need.

Before the end of the nineteenth century Marx’s

theory and his revolutionary vision had been em-

braced by the leaders of socialist parties in a num-

ber of European countries. The spread of Marxism’s

influence was soon followed by schisms in inter-

national socialism, however. By the end of World

War I, a fundamental split had taken place between

Lenin’s version of Marxism in the Soviet Union

(which after Lenin’s death became known as

Marxism-Leninism) and the democratically ori-

ented socialism of major Western socialist parties,

which stemmed from the revisionism of Eduard

Bernstein. The legacy of that division was a rivalry

between socialist and communist parties, which

was to hamper the left-wing forces in continental

European countries for several decades. Ironically,

though Marx’s theory suggested that proletarian

revolutions would triumph in the most economi-

cally advanced capitalist nations, during the twen-

tieth century successful revolutions under the

banner of Marxism and in the name of the prole-

tariat were carried off only in countries with

mainly agrarian economies, in which industrial-

ization was in its early stages and the working class

was relatively small.

See also: COMMUNISM; DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM; DIC-

TATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT; SOCIALISM

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Avineri, Shlomo. (1971). Karl Marx: Social and Political

Thought. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University

Press.

Evans, Alfred B., Jr. (1993). Soviet Marxism-Leninism: The

Decline of an Ideology. Westport, CT: Praeger.

Kolakowski, Leszek. (1978). Main Currents of Marxism:

Its Rise, Growth, and Dissolution. 3 vols. Oxford, UK:

Clarendon.

Leonhard, Wolfgang. (1974). Three Faces of Marxism: The

Political Concepts of Soviet Ideology, Maoism, and Hu-

manist Marxism, tr. Ewald Osers. New York: Holt,

Rinehart and Winston.

LFRED

B. E

VANS

MASLENITSA

Derived from the word maslo, or “butter/oil,”

Maslenitsa was a pagan mythological being per-

sonifying death, gloom, and winter as well as a

week-long festival that divided winter and spring

seasons. The pagan festival was synchronized with

Lent and is equivalent to the western European

Shrovetide and carnival. Maslenitsa survived

MASLENITSA

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

among all Eastern Slavs, particularly Russians,

who began celebrating it on a Sunday a week prior

to Lent, the final day when meat was permitted in

the diet according to Church practices. After the

last meat meal, for the remainder of the week peo-

ple consumed milk products and fish, but most

commonly butter-covered bliny, or pancakes. The

festival ended on the following Sunday, the day be-

fore Lent, and is known as the day of dispatching

Maslenitsa or Proshcheny Voskresenie (“Forgiveness

Sunday”), as people who had wronged others (alive

or deceased) begged for absolution. This day was

rounded off with the ritual destruction and burial

of Maslenitsa, commonly represented in the form

of a female effigy made of straw and dressed in

woman’s garb, in a bonfire, drowning in a river,

or tearing apart. A wooden wheel, symbolizing the

sun-disk, was also often burned alongside the ef-

figy, leading to the idea that this festival was cel-

ebrated in connection with the spring equinox

(usually on March 22) in pre-Christian times.

The annihilation of Maslenitsa symbolized the

passing of the winter, spring renewal, and prepa-

ration for the new agrarian cycle as well as human

and animal procreation. Family-marriage relations

were tested among newlywed couples, who were

publicly discussed, required to openly show affec-

tion, and put through trials testing their love and

fidelity. Eligible singles who failed to wed the pre-

vious year were publicly ridiculed and punished.

Virility of humans, plants, and animals were con-

jured up by performing magical rites, fist-fighting,

dancing, loud singing, and sled-riding contests

downhill or on troikas. The continued celebration

of this pagan festival cloaked in a Christian holi-

day into modern times among the Eastern Slavs is

a good example of dual faith (dvoyeverie) or syn-

cretism.

See also: FOLKLORE; RUSSIANS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ivantis, Linda J. (1989). Russian Folk Belief. Armonk, NY:

M. E. Sharpe.

OMAN

K. K

OVALEV

MATERIAL BALANCES

Material balance planning substituted for the mar-

ket as the mechanism for allocating goods in the

Soviet economy. Gosplan, the State Planning Com-

mittee, was responsible each year for equating sup-

ply and demand for the thousands of raw materi-

als and manufactured goods that were used

domestically in production processes, allocated to

satisfy consumer needs, or earmarked for export.

The three-stage process of constructing the annual

plan involved identifying the sources and uses

for high-priority (funded commodities), medium-

priority (planned commodities), and low-priority

(decentrally planned) goods, and then establishing

a balance between sources and uses. In the first

stage, planners sent “control figures” down through

the economic hierarchy to the enterprise. Control

figures reflected the priorities of top political offi-

cials, specified initially as aggregate output targets

or percentage growth rates for strategic sectors of

the economy, and then disaggregated and matched

with projected input requirements by Gosplan. In

the second stage, Soviet enterprises provided a de-

tailed listing of the input requirements necessary

to fulfill their output targets. In the third stage,

planners constructed a material balance that en-

sured an equilibrium between the planned output

target and the material input requirements for all

goods involved in the planning process.

In a market economy, prices adjust to elimi-

nate surpluses or shortages; in the Soviet economy,

planners adjusted physical quantities to equate

supply and demand for each product. A material

balance was achieved when the sources of supply

(current production, Q

, inventories, Q

t-1

, and im-

ports M

) equaled the sources of demand (inter-

industry demand, ID

, household demand, FD

, and

exports, X

). That is, a material balance existed on

paper when, for each of the planned goods: Q

t-1

+ M

⫽ ID

+ FD

+ X

The mechanics of establishing a material bal-

ance in practice was impeded by several planning

policies. First, planners set annual output targets

high relative to the productive capacity of the firm.

If tire manufacturers failed to meet monthly or

quarterly production quotas, for example, this ad-

versely affected downstream firms (producers of

cars, trucks, tractors, or bicycles) that relied on tires

to fulfill their output targets, and reduced the avail-

ability of tires to consumers for replacement pur-

poses. Second, planners constructed a bonus system

that allowed additional payments as high as 60 per-

cent of the monthly wage if output targets were

fulfilled. Knowing that output targets would be

high, managers over-ordered requisite inputs and

under-reported their productive capacity during the

second stage of the plan-formulation process. Third,

MATERIAL BALANCES

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

when shortages arose, planners refrained from ad-

justing centrally determined prices of these “deficit”

commodities (defitsitny). Instead, they used a prior-

ity system to restrict the availability of deficit goods

to low-priority sectors, typically those sectors most

closely involving goods demanded by consumers.

See also: FULL ECONOMIC ACCOUNTING; GOSPLAN; TECH-

PROMFINPLAN

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bergson, Abram. (1964). The Economics of Soviet Planning.

New Haven: Yale University Press.

Montias, John M. (1959). “Planning with Material Bal-

ances in Soviet-Type Economies.” American Economic

Review 49: 963–985.

USAN

J. L

INZ

MATERIAL PRODUCT SYSTEM

For decades the Material Product System (MPS) was

used in countries with centrally planned economies

as a tool for analyzing economic processes at the

macro level and policy making. Essentially, MPS

performs the same functions as the System of Na-

tional Accounts (SNA), but there are important dif-

ference between the two.

MPS divides the economy into two parts: ma-

terial production, where national income (NMP) is

created (industry, agriculture, construction, freight

transportation, etc.), and the nonmaterial part of

the economy. The concept of economic sectors and,

hence, sectoral groupings, was entirely omitted in

the MPS system. Such an approach toward esti-

mation of macroeconomic indicators met the needs

of planners and was instrumental in the process of

centralized planning, centralized allocation of ma-

terial resources, and tracking of plan fulfillment.

Essentially, MPS is a system of tables, of which

the most important are the balance of production,

consumption, and investment of the social product

and national income; the balance of national

wealth, the balance of fixed assets, and the balance

of labor resources. A significant part of the MPS

system was its series of input-output tables, which

were compiled in the USSR beginning in 1959. In

addition to the main MPS tables, there was a series

of supplementary tables that gave a more detailed

picture of certain aspects of the economic process.

The MPS as a system of aggregate macro indi-

cators was an important tool for general assess-

ment of the economic situation under the central

planning system. Its drawback, however, was that

it reflected economic processes in a somewhat in-

consistent and partial manner. A large part of the

economy, the so-called nonproductive sphere, was

neglected in the balance of the national economy.

In Soviet statistics, a methodologically sound and

systematically integrated system of indicators was

available only for the material production and dis-

tribution of material product. This significantly re-

duced the role of macro estimates as an instrument

for analysis of economic developments.

Estimates of economic growth and interna-

tional comparisons were also hindered by the lack

of coordination between MPS indicators and finan-

cial flows. In the balance of state financial resources

and the state budget, the financial resources of en-

terprises and organizations of both productive and

nonproductive spheres are represented as a single

entry. The balance of money income and expendi-

ture of households shows the total money income

of the population earned from both “productive”

and “nonproductive” activities. The method used to

derive this indicator is such that it is impossible to

separate these two sources of revenue.

As a result, the macroeconomic indicators that

reflect material resources are not balanced and com-

parable with the volume and the structure of

financial resources. Also, export and import indi-

cators in MPS are presented in a simplified way and

differ from the similar indicators used in the bal-

ance of payments (SNA concept). Missing in the

MPS approach are such indicators as disposable in-

come, savings, and public debt.

The MPS system, which underwent some

changes in the USSR in 1957, remained essentially

the same for more than thirty years thereafter un-

til the SNA system was introduced in the statisti-

cal practice of the countries in transition following

the breakup of the Soviet Union.

See also: COMMAND ADMINISTRATIVE ECONOMY; ECO-

NOMIC GROWTH, SOVIET

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Belkindas, Misha V., and Kostinsky, Barry L. (1990). “Of-

ficial Soviet Gross National Product Accounting.” In

Measuring Soviet GNP: Problems and Solutions, A Con-

ference Report. Washington, D.C.: Central Intelligence

Agency, Directorate of Intelligence.

MATERIAL PRODUCT SYSTEM

905

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

World Bank. (1992). Statistical Handbook: States of the

Former USSR (Studies of Economies in Transformation,

3). Washington, DC: World Bank.

World Bank. (1993). Historically Planned Economies, A

Guide to the Data, by Paul Marer, et al. Washington

DC: World Bank.

ISHA

V. B

ELKINDAS

MATRYOSHKA DOLLS

The matryoshka, a set of four to eight hollow

wooden dolls of graduated size nesting inside each

other, is the most familiar item of Russian folk art

today and possibly one of the most ancient. Leg-

ends abound of similar nesting dolls in Siberia, ex-

ecuted in precious metals, and the rounded female

figure was a familiar fertility symbol in pagan Rus-

sia. Yet the matryoshka may well be of compara-

tively recent origin, its form derived from a

Japanese prototype that caught the eye of the

avant-garde artist Sergei Malyutin during the

1890s. Malyutin’s patroness, Princess Tenisheva,

was an active promoter of the folk art revival of

this period; he sought out items with appeal for

the Russian market that could be made at the crafts

school on her estate, Talashkino. It was here that

Malyutin designed the first known matryoshka.

The most ubiquitous matryoshka is the pink-

cheeked peasant woman in native sarafan, her head

covered with the traditional scarf. Variations soon

appeared, however. Nests of dolls with the faces of

famous writers, members of artistic circles, mili-

tary heroes, or members of a family were created

during the early twentieth century. A century later,

though the original doll is still being produced,

matryoshka painters have adapted to the modern

market, creating nesting sets of Soviet political lead-

ers, U.S. presidents, Russian tsars, literary figures,

and famous Russian portraits. Modern ma-

tryoshkas by skilled artists, who often work in

acrylic paint, command correspondingly high

prices; though folk art in form, in execution they

are works of high art.

MATRYOSHKA DOLLS

906

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

Colorfully painted nesting dolls are essential souvenirs from a trip to Russia. P

HOTOGRAPH BY

USAN

D. R

OCK

. R

EPRODUCED BY PERMISSION

See also: FOLKLORE

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hilton, Alison. (1995). Russian Folk Art. Bloomington:

Indiana University Press.

RISCILLA

OOSEVELT

MATVEYEV, ARTAMON SERGEYEVICH

(1625–1682), military officer, diplomat, courtier,

boyar.

The son of a non-noble bureaucrat, Artamon

Matveyev began his career at the age of thirteen as

a court page and companion to the future Tsar

Alexei Mikhailovich. He soon became colonel of a

musketeer regiment and traveled much of Russia

and its borderlands on military and diplomatic mis-

sions. He helped negotiate the union of Ukraine

with Russia in 1654, defended the tsar in the Cop-

per Riots of 1662, and guarded many foreign em-

bassies, including the clerics arriving to judge

Patriarch Nikon in 1666 and 1667. By 1669, al-

though still a musketeer colonel, he had become a

stolnik (table attendant, a high court rank), namest-

nik (honorary governor-general) of Serpukhov, and

head of the Ukrainian Chancellery (Malorossysky

Prikaz).

Soon his fortunes rose even higher. After the

death of Tsaritsa Maria Miloslavskaya, the tsar is

said to have visited Matveyev’s home and met the

family’s foster daughter Natalia Naryshkina,

whom he married. This made Matveyev the tsar’s

de facto father-in-law, traditionally a very power-

ful position in Muscovite politics. He quickly added

leadership of the Department of Foreign Affairs or

Posolsky Prikaz (in effect becoming Russia’s prime

minister), several other diplomatic or regional de-

partments, and the State Pharmacy to his Ukrain-

ian Chancellery post. He skillfully formulated

foreign policy and dealt with governments as di-

verse as England, Poland, the Vatican, Persia,

China, and Bukhara. He also improved Russia’s

medical facilities, headed publishing, mining, and

industrial ventures for the tsar, and organized the

creation of a Western-style court theater.

Foreign visitors noted his diverse responsibili-

ties. They often referred to him as “factotum,” the

man who does everything. They also remarked on

his knowledge of and interest in their societies. A

patron of education and the arts, he kept musicians

in his home, had his son taught Latin, and collected

foreign books, clocks, paintings, and furniture. He

remained close to the tsar, although he rose slowly

through the higher ranks. At the birth of the fu-

ture Peter the Great in 1672, he was made okol-

nichy (majordomo), and in 1674 he received the

highest Muscovite court rank, boyar.

With the sudden death of Tsar Alexei in 1676,

things changed. The succession of sickly fourteen-

year-old Tsar Fyodor brought the Miloslavsky fam-

ily back into power. Matveyev immediately began

to lose posts, prominence, and respect. During his

journey into “honorable exile”—provincial gover-

norship in Siberia—he was convicted of sorcery. He

was stripped of rank and possessions and exiled,

first to the prison town of Pustozersk and later to

Mezen. Tsar Fyodor’s death and Peter’s accession in

1682 brought Matveyev back to Moscow in tri-

umph, but only days later he was killed when pro-

Miloslavsky rioters surged through the capital.

Because of his decades of service, his promi-

nence, fall, and dramatic death, and a collection of

autobiographical letters from exile, Matveyev re-

ceived frequent and generally favorable attention

from Russian writers in the eighteenth and nine-

teenth centuries. Their works ranged from schol-

arly biographies and articles to poems, plays, and

children’s books. He became less visible in the twen-

tieth century, when Soviet historians lost interest

in supporters of the old regime. To date there has

been only fragmentary treatment of his life in Eng-

lish.

See also: ALEXEI MIKHAILOVICH; BOYAR; COPPER RIOTS;

NARYSHKINA, NATALIA KIRILLOVNA; NIKON, PATRI-

ARCH; PETER I

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bushkovitch, Paul. (2001). Peter the Great: The Struggle

for Power, 1671–1725. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge

University Press.

ARTHA

UBY

AHANA

MAXIM THE GREEK, ST.

(c. 1475–1556), Greek monk canonized in the Or-

thodox Church.

A learned Greek monk, translator, and writer

resident in Muscovy who was imprisoned by Mus-

covite authorities and never allowed to return

MAXIM THE GREEK, ST.

907

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

home, Maxim had great moral and intellectual au-

thority with contemporaries and posterity and was

canonized in 1988. Born Michael Trivolis (Triboles)

in the Greek city of Arta some twenty years after

the Turkish capture of Constantinople, he went to

Italy as a young man, where he was in contact

with many prominent Renaissance figures. Under

the influence of Savonarola he became a monk in

the San Marco Dominican Monastery (1502), but

two years later he returned to Greece, entering the

Vatopedi monastery on Mount Athos under the

monastic name of Maximos, rejecting Roman

Catholicism and the humanist world of his youth,

and concentrating upon the Eastern Orthodox the-

ological tradition. In 1516 he was sent to Moscow

to correct Russian ecclesiastical books. There he fell

into disfavor with Grand Prince Vasily and Metro-

politan Daniel, the head of the Russian Church, was

twice convicted of treason and heresy (1525, 1531),

and eventually died in Muscovy without being ex-

onerated or regaining his freedom. During much

of this time he translated biblical and Byzantine

texts into Russian, and authored original composi-

tions, including critical, historical, liturgical, philo-

logical, and exegetical works, demonstrations of his

own orthodoxy and innocence, descriptions of the

world (he was the first to mention Columbus’s dis-

covery of the New World), explication of the ideals

and practice of monasticism, and a great deal else.

He instructed Russian pupils in Greek, and inspired

the study of lexicography and grammar.

Despite his official disgrace, Maxim’s volumi-

nous compositions were greatly revered and very

influential in Old Russia; his biography and writ-

ings have been the subject of thousands of schol-

arly books and articles.

See also: DANIEL, METROPOLITAN; MUSCOVY; MONASTI-

CISM; ORTHODOXY; POSSESSORS AND NON-POSSESSORS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Haney, Jack V. (1973). From Italy to Muscovy: The Life

and Works of Maxim the Greek Munich: W. Fink.

Obolensky, Dimitri. (1981). “Italy, Mount Athos, and

Muscovy: the Three Worlds of Maximos the Greek

(c. 1470–1556).” Proceedings of the British Academy

67:143–161.

Olmsted, Hugh M. (1987). “A Learned Greek Monk in

Muscovite Exile: Maksim Grek and the Old Testa-

ment Prophets.” Modern Greek Studies Yearbook

3:1–73.

Sevcenko, Ihor. (1997). “On the Greek Poetic Output of

Maksim Grek [revised version].” Byzantinoslavica

78:1–70.

Taube, Moshe, and Olmsted, Hugh M. (1988). “Povest’

o Esfiri: The Ostroh Bible and Maksim Grek’s Trans-

lation of the Book of Esther.” Harvard Ukrainian

Studies 11(1/2):100–117.

UGH

M. O

LMSTED

MAYAKOVSKY, VLADIMIR

VLADIMIROVICH

(1893–1930), poet, playwright.

Vladimir Mayakovsky was born in Bagdadi,

Georgia (later renamed Mayakovsky in his honor).

His father’s death of tetanus in 1906 devastated the

family emotionally and financially, and the themes

of death, abandonment, and infection recurred

in many of Mayakovsky’s poems. As a student,

Mayakovsky became an ardent revolutionary;

he was arrested and served eleven months for his

Bolshevik activities in 1909. In 1911 he was ac-

cepted into the Moscow Institute of Painting, Sculp-

ture, and Architecture, where he met David

Burlyuk, who was beginning to gather the Hylaean

group of artists and poets: Nikolai and Vladimir

Burlyuk, Alexandra Exter, Viktor (Velemir) Khleb-

nikov, Alexei Kruchenykh, and Benedikt Livshits.

In 1912 the group issued its first manifesto, “A Slap

in the Face of Public Taste,” the highly charged

rhetoric that created a scandalous sensation an-

nouncing the arrival of Futurism in the artistic cul-

ture of Russia. The poets and artists of Hylaea,

Mayakovsky in particular, were associated in the

popular press with social disruption, hooliganism,

and anarchist politics.

Mayakovsky was an enthusiastic supporter of

the Bolshevik revolution; much of his artistic ef-

fort was devoted to propaganda for the state. He

wrote agitational poems and, combining his con-

siderable artistic skill with his ability to write short,

didactic poems, constructed large posters that hung

in the windows of the Russian Telegraph Agency

(ROSTA). He also wrote and staged at the Moscow

State Circus a satirical play, Mystery Bouffe, which

skewered bourgeois culture and the church. His

most political poems, “150,000,000” (1919) and

“Vladimir Ilich Lenin” (1924), became required

reading for every Soviet schoolchild and helped cre-

ate the image of Mayakovsky as a mythic hero of

the Soviet Union, a position that Mayakovsky

found increasingly untenable in the later 1920s.

Mayakovsky remained a relentless foe of bureau-

cratism and authoritarianism in Soviet society; this

MAYAKOVSKY, VLADIMIR VLADIMIROVICH

908

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

earned him official resentment and led to restric-

tions on travel and other privileges. On April 14,

1930, the combined pressures of Soviet control and

a series of disastrous love affairs, most notably

with Lili Brik, led to Mayakovsky’s suicide in his

apartment in Moscow.

See also: BOLSHEVISM; CIRCUS; FUTURISM

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brown, Edward J. (1973). Mayakovsky: A Poet in the Rev-

olution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Jangfeldt, Bengt. (1976). Majakovskij and Futurism,

1917–1921. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell.

Markov, Vladimir. (1969). Russian Futurism: A History.

Berkeley: University of California Press.

Woroszylski, Wiktor. (1970). The Life of Mayakovsky.

New York: Orion Press.

ARK

ONECNY

MAZEPA, HETMAN IVAN STEPANOVICH

(c. 1639–1709), Hetman (Cossack military leader)

of Left-Bank Ukraine, 1687 to 1708.

Hetman Ivan Mazepa was raised in Poland and

educated in the West, returning to Ukraine in 1663

to enter the service of the Polish-sponsored hetman

Peter Doroshenko during the turbulent period of

Ukrainian history known as the Ruin. In 1674 he

transferred his allegiance to the Moscow-appointed

hetman Ivan Samoilovich, whom he replaced when

the latter fell from favor during Russia’s campaign

against the Crimean Tatars in 1687. He owed his

promotion partly to the patronage of Prince Vasily

Golitsyn.

In the 1680s to 1700s Mazepa remained loyal

to Russia. In 1700 he became one of the first re-

cipients of Peter I’s new Order of St. Andrew. But

he did not regard himself as permanently bound,

as he governed in princely style and conducted a

semi-independent foreign policy. In 1704, during

the Great Northern War against Sweden, he oc-

cupied part of right-bank (Polish) Ukraine with

Peter I’s permission. However, Mazepa was under

constant pressure at home to defend Cossack rights

and to allay fears about Cossack regiments being

reorganized on European lines. The final straw

seems to have been Peter’s failure to defend Ukraine

against a possible attack by the Swedish-sponsored

king of Poland, Stanislas Leszczynski. Mazepa

clearly believed that his obligations to the tsar were

at an end: “We, having voluntarily acquiesced to

the authority of his Tsarist Majesty for the sake of

the unified Eastern Faith, now, being a free people,

wish to withdraw, with expressions of our grati-

tude for the tsar’s protection and not wishing to

raise our hands in the shedding of Christian blood”

(Subtelny).

At some point in 1707 or 1708, Mazepa made

a secret agreement to help Charles XII of Sweden

invade Russia and to establish a Swedish protec-

torate over Ukraine. In October 1708 he fled to

Charles’s side. Alexander Menshikov responded by

storming and burning the hetman’s headquarters

at Baturin, a drastic action which deprived both

Mazepa and the Swedes of men and supplies.

Mazepa brought only 3,000 to 4,000 men to aid

the Swedes, who were defeated at Poltava in July

1709. Mazepa fled with Charles to Turkey and died

there.

Peter I regarded the defection of his “loyal sub-

ject” as a personal insult. Mazepa was “a new Ju-

das,” whom he (unjustly) accused of plans to hand

over Orthodox monasteries and churches to the

Catholics and Uniates. In his absence, Mazepa was

excommunicated, and his effigy was stripped of the

St. Andrew cross and hanged. He remains a con-

troversial figure in Ukraine, while elsewhere he is

best known from romanticized versions of his life

in fiction and opera.

See also: COSSACKS; MENSHIKOV, ALEXANDER DANILO-

VICH; PETER I

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Babinsky, Hubert. (1974). The Mazepa Legend in European

Romanticism. New York: Columbia University Press.

Mackiv, Theodore. (1983). English Reports on Mazepa,

1687–1709. New York: Ukrainian Historical Associ-

ation.

Subtelny, Orest. (1978). “Mazepa, Peter I, and the Ques-

tion of Treason.” Harvard Ukrainian Studies

2:158–184.

INDSEY

UGHES

MEDVEDEV, ROY ALEXANDROVICH

(b. 1925), dissident historian.

Roy Medvedev is renowned as the author of

the monumental dissident history of Stalinism, Let

MEDVEDEV, ROY ALEXANDROVICH

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History Judge, first published in English in 1972.

The son of a prominent Soviet Marxist scholar who

was murdered by Stalin in the 1930s, Medvedev

pursued a teaching career before becoming a re-

searcher in the Soviet Academy of Pedagogical Sci-

ences. Nikita Khrushchev’s denunciation of Josef V.

Stalin at the Twentieth Party Congress (1956)

spurred his interest in the Soviet past. Medvedev

joined the Communist Party at this time. The fur-

ther repudiation of Stalin at the Twenty-Second

Congress (1961) impelled him to begin writing his

anti-Stalinist tome, which was completed in 1968.

Fearful that Stalin would be rehabilitated and re-

pression renewed, Medvedev decided to publish it

abroad. Let History Judge reflected the dissident

thinking that emerged in the 1960s among intel-

lectuals who, like Medvedev, sought a reformed,

democratic socialism and a return to Leninism.

Meanwhile, his opposition to any rehabilitation of

Stalin led to his expulsion from the party. Medvedev

was often subject to house arrest and KGB harass-

ment under Leonid Brezhnev, but he managed to

publish abroad numerous critical writings on So-

viet history and politics. The liberalization under

Mikhail Gorbachev allowed publication of a new

edition of Let History Judge and Medvedev’s return

to the party and political life. The demise of the So-

viet Union and the Communist Party allowed him

to found a new socialist party and continue as a

prolific, critical writer on Russian political life.

See also: DE-STALINIZATION; DISSIDENT MOVEMENT

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Medvedev, Roy. (1972). Let History Judge: The Origins and

Consequences of Stalinism, ed. David Joravsky, tr.

Colleen Taylor. London: Macmillan.

Medvedev, Roy. (1989). Let History Judge: The Origins and

Consequences of Stalinism, rev. and expanded edition,

ed. and tr. George Shriver. New York: Oxford Uni-

versity Press.

OGER

D. M

ARKWICK

MEDVEDEV, SYLVESTER AGAFONIKOVICH

(1641–1691), author, poet, and polemicist.

Simeon Agafonikovich Medvedev (monastic

name: Sylvester) began his career as a secretary

(podyachy) in one of the Muscovite chancelleries. In

that capacity, he participated in diplomatic missions,

until in the early 1670s he became a monk. A stu-

dent of Simeon Polotsky, he acted as his teacher’s

secretary and editor, and acquired connections in the

court of Fyodor Alexeyevich (r. 1676–1682). After

Polotsky’s death, he assumed the mantle of his

teacher as the court poet, first of Fyodor, and then

of Sofia Alexeyevna (regent, 1682–1689). After

1678, he also worked as editor (spravshchik) in the

Printing Office. During the 1680s, he was occupied

with three main activities: working in the Printing

Office, authoring polemics on the moment of tran-

substantiation (Eucharist conflict), and teaching in

a school in the Zaikonospassky monastery. He re-

peatedly urged Sophia Alexeyevna to establish an

Academy in Moscow, based on a plan (privilegia)

that Polotsky may well have drawn up. When such

an Academy was established in 1685 (the Slavonic-

Greek-Latin Academy), it was the Greek Ioannikios

and Sophronios Leichoudes, and not Medvedev, who

were chosen to head it. This, together with the Eu-

charist conflict, created enormous animosity be-

tween Sylvester and the Greek teachers. Patriarch of

Moscow Joakim (in office 1672–1690) gradually

but systematically undermined Medvedev, a monk

who refused to obey him in the Eucharist conflict.

While Sofia was in power, Medvedev felt well pro-

tected. After Peter I’s coup in August 1689, Medvedev

fled Moscow. He was arrested, brought to the Trin-

ity St. Sergius Monastery, tortured, and obliged to

sign a confession renouncing his previous errors re-

garding the Eucharist in 1690. Joakim’s victory was

complete. After a year of detention, Sylvester was

also accused as a collaborator in a conspiracy against

Peter the Great, Joakim, and their supporters. He

was condemned to death and beheaded in 1691. Au-

thor of several polemical works on the transub-

stantiation moment, he also composed orations,

poetry, and panegyrics. To him are also attributed

works on Russian bibliography and an account of

the musketeer rebellion of 1682.

See also: FYODOR ALEXEYEVICH; JOAKIM, PATRIARCH; OR-

THODOXY; SLAVO-GRECO-LATIN ACADEMY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hughes, Lindsey. (1990). Sophia, Regent of Russia,

1657–1704. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

IKOLAOS

A. C

HRISSIDIS

MEDVEDEV, ZHORES ALEXANDROVICH

(b. 1925), biochemist and author.

Zhores Alexandrovich Medvedev was born in

Tbilisi, Georgia. He is the identical twin brother of

MEDVEDEV, SYLVESTER AGAFONIKOVICH

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historian Roy Alexandrovich Medvedev. Zhores

Medvedev graduated from the Timiryazev Acad-

emy of Agricultural Sciences in 1950 and received

a master’s degree in biology from the Moscow In-

stitute of Plant Physiology that same year. Between

1951 and 1962 he conducted research at the

Timiryazev Academy and soon earned international

acclaim for his work on protein biosynthesis and

the physiology of the aging process.

In addition to his reputation as a biologist and

a gerontologist, Medvedev is known for his criti-

cism of the Lysenko regime in Soviet science. His

book The Rise and Fall of the Lysenko Regime circu-

lated in samizdat versions in the Soviet Union in

the 1960s and was published in the West in 1969.

Medvedev was forbidden to travel abroad and was

kept under strict KGB surveillance. On May 29,

1970, Medvedev was arrested in his home and put

into a mental hospital in the provincial town of

Kaluga. He was kept there for two weeks while a

psychiatric committee attempted to rationalize his

confinement in medical terms.

On his first trip abroad, to London in 1973,

Medvedev’s Soviet citizenship was revoked, and he

settled in London as an émigré. His Soviet citizen-

ship was restored in 1990, and his numerous

works have subsequently been published in Russia.

Apart from numerous articles and papers on geron-

tology, genetics, and biochemistry, he has authored

books on such important figures as Yuri Andropov

and Mikhail Gorbachev and written on Soviet nu-

clear disasters and Soviet science in general.

See also: LYSENKO, TROFIM DENISOVICH; MEDVEDEV, ROY

ALEXANDER

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Medvedev, Zhores A., and Medvedev, Roy A. (1971). A

Question of Madness. New York: Knopf.

ÓSA

AGNÚSDÓTTIR

MELNIKOV, KONSTANTIN STEPANOVICH

(1908–1974), a leading theoretician among mod-

ernist architects.

Konstantin Stepanovich Melnikov rose to fame in

the West as a result of his design for the Soviet

Pavilion at the Paris Exhibition of Decorative Arts

in 1925, a building marked by its dramatic formal

simplicity and avoidance of decorative rhetoric,

bold use of color, windowed front facade, and un-

usual exterior staircase that cut diagonally across

the rectangular two-storied building. But his most

impressive work in the Soviet Union was his club

architecture, none more striking than the Rusakov

Club, designed and built between 1927 and 1929

for the Union of Municipal Workers.

A graduate of the prestigious Moscow school

of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, Melnikov

in 1920 joined the Soviet parallel to the Bauhaus,

the Higher State Artistic and Technical Studios

(VKhUTEMAS), where the struggle for control over

the direction of revolutionary architecture was

fought until discussion was terminated by a new

Stalinist orthodoxy. Melnikov refused to join either

of the two competing architectural organizations,

but remained closely associated with the Associa-

tion of New Architects (ASNOVA), especially in his

quest for a new “architectural language” for the

age. Despite this association, his work influenced

architects in both camps. Melnikov concerned him-

self with the functional demands of a building and

with the rational organization of the composition.

But he was most concerned with devising a unique

expressive appearance that would unite spatial or-

ganization with innovative interior design, em-

ploying such forms that would make the buildings

appear “as individualists against the general back-

drop of urban building.” Melnikov’s architectural

language consisted of elementary geometric forms

such as cylinders, cones, and parallelepipeds. It is

the cylinder that forms the basis for Melnikov’s

own home, built between 1927 and 1929 on

Krivoarbatsky Lane off Moscow’s famed Arbat.

In 1937 Melnikov was accused of practicing the

grotesquerie of formalism and of obstructing and

perverting the resolution of the problem of the type

and form of Soviet architecture. He was driven

from architectural practice.