Encyclopedia of Russian History

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ern Europe, and the opportunity to gain Finland

from Sweden militarily (1808–1809), Bessarabia

from the Ottoman Empire (with the Bucharest

treaty in 1812), and Georgia from Persia (by the

Gulistan treaty in 1813).

Despite these large successes, Russia remained

hostile toward Napoleon. In 1805 the Orthodox

Church declared Napoleon the Antichrist. And for

most of the Russian elite who had been raised with

French language and culture, Napoleon was the ar-

chetypal expression of Barbary, not a Frenchman

but a “damned Corsican.”

Despite its renewal on September 27, 1808, at

Erfurt, the Russian-French alliance was indeed frag-

ile. The two countries had opposite views on the Pol-

ish question and were rivals in the Balkans and in

the Mediterranean. The Continental blockade became

more and more expensive for that Russian economy

and was denounced by Alexander in December 1810.

These tensions led Napoleon to initiate a war

that he expected to be short. He invaded the Russ-

ian territory on June 24, 1812, with an army of

more than 400,000 men. On June 28, the French

were already in Vilna, and on August 18 they en-

tered Smolensk, forcing the Russians to retreat.

For the Russian people, the invasion was a na-

tional trauma, not only because of the brutality of

the war—in one day, at the battle of Borodino, on

September 7, 1812, the Russians lost 50,000 men

and the French 40,000—but also because of its

blasphemous dimension: Napoleon did not hesitate

to use churches as stables. On September 14, when

Napoleon entered the sacred capital, Moscow the

Mother, he found the city empty and devastated

by fires, which went on for five days. The burn-

ing of Moscow was a terrible shock, and it gener-

ated feelings of resentment from the Russian people

toward Alexander. But soon it united all the Rus-

sians, whatever their social class, in a patriotic and

mystic struggle against the invader. Napoleon’s

promise to liberate the Russian peasants from serf-

dom had no effect on the people, who, along with

the tsar and his elite, sensed the urgency of a phys-

ical, moral, and spiritual danger.

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Napoleon I and Alexander I at Tilsit studying a map of Europe. © B

ETTMANN

/CORBIS

For Napoleon, the situation was impossible: On

the one hand the lack of supplies prevented him

from going any farther; on the other hand, he was

unable to force Alexander to negotiate. On October

16, the retreat of the Grand Army began in diffi-

cult conditions. Subject to cold, hunger, and ty-

phus, attacked by the partisan movement and by

peasants on their way back, less than 10 percent

of the Grand Army was able to leave the Russian

territory in December 1812.

The French defeat was a fatal blow to the

Napoleonic adventure and made Alexander the con-

queror of Napoleon and the “savior of Europe.” In

February 1815, Napoleon tried to regain his lost

power, but the adventure did not last, and the Hun-

dred Days did not harm Alexander’s prestige. The

tsar personally took part in the Congress of Vienna

and engaged in the construction of a new political

and geopolitical order in Europe. During the con-

gress, Alexander’s Russia took great advantage of

the victory over Napoleon from both diplomatic

and territorial points of view. But beyond this

geopolitical concrete outcome, the collective and

messianic triumph over the invader constituted in

Russia a major step toward the birth of a modern

national identity.

See also: ALEXANDER I; AUSTERLITZ, BATTLE OF;

BORODINO, BATTLE OF; KUTUZOV, MIKHAIL IL-

IARONOVICH; FRANCE, RELATIONS WITH; FRENCH WAR

OF 1812; TILSIT, TREATY OF; VIENNA, CONGRESS OF;

WAR OF THE THIRD COALITION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cate, Curtis. (1985). The War of the Two Emperors. New

York: Random House.

Hartley, Janet. (1994). Alexander I. London: Longman.

Palmer, Alan. (1967). Napoleon in Russia. London: Simon

and Schuster.

Tarle, Eugene. (1979). Napoleon’s Invasion of Russia, 1812.

New York: Octagon Books.

Wesling, Molly. (2001). Napoleon in Russian Cultural

Mythology. New York: Peter Lang.

ARIE

-P

IERRE

NARIMANOV, NARIMAN

(1870–1925), renowned educator, author, medical

doctor, long-time Bolshevik, and head of the first

soviet government of Azerbaijan from 1920 to

1922.

In Soviet interpretations, Narimanov loomed

large as the key native Bolshevik who supported

sovietization of his homeland, Azerbaijan. He

chaired the first Soviet of People’s Commissars

(Sovnarkom), which was established with the Red

Army’s overthrow of the independent government

on April 28, 1920. Narimanov was not in the Azer-

baijani capital of Baku at this time, and it is not

clear that he supported this means of installing so-

viet power. Documents released in the late 1980s

indicate that Narimanov’s vision of soviet rule in

Azerbaijan was closer to an anticolonial program

leading to native rule than to a means for the dom-

inance of an industrial proletariat that, in Azer-

baijan, was largely Russian. During the first years

of soviet power, Narimanov found himself in-

creasingly at odds with the nonnative leaders of

the Transcaucasian party, especially Stalin’s pro-

tégé, Sergo Ordzhonikidze. Narimanov’s opposi-

tion to key policies, among them the merging of

the three republics of Azerbaijan, Armenia, and

Georgia into a Transcaucasian Federation (Zakfed-

eratsiia, or ZSFSR), led to his removal in 1922 from

Baku. His prominence was such that his removal

was euphemized as a “promotion” to a post in

Moscow.

Narimanov’s prerevolutionary record as an

educator and writer led him to take a hand in cul-

tural policies in the early soviet period. He sup-

ported the Latinization policy for the Azerbaijani

Turkish alphabet, which was an indigenous pro-

posal, but which Moscow favored. He backed

school reform projects that came from Russia’s

Commissariat of Enlightenment. His speeches to

teachers’ conferences, however, revealed that his ul-

timate goal was wide popular participation in gov-

ernment for Azerbaijani “toilers.” His use of that

term rather than “proletariat,” coupled with his

support for rural schools, suggest that he hoped

for Azerbaijani villagers to have a genuine part-

nership in governing with urban workers, both

Azerbaijani and other.

Narimanov died in Moscow on March 19,

1925, allegedly of a weak heart. His body was cre-

mated, which has no precedent in Azerbaijani

(Muslim) tradition. Some scholars believe he may

have been poisoned. His ashes were interred in the

Kremlin wall.

See also: AZERBAIJAN AND AZERIS; CAUCASUS; SOV-

NARKOM; TRANSCAUCASIAN FEDERATIONS

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Altstadt, Audrey. (1992). The Azerbaijani Turks: Power and

Identity under Russian Rule. Stanford, CA: Hoover In-

stitution Press.

UDREY

LTSTADT

NARKOMINDEL See PEOPLE’S COMMISSARIAT OF NA-

TIONALITIES.

NARODNICHESTVO See POPULISM.

NARVA, BATTLES OF

The first battle of Narva on November 30, 1700,

was Peter the Great’s first major defeat in the Great

Northern War. Immediately after the Russian dec-

laration of war in August 1700, Peter marched his

army into Swedish territory to try to capture the

port town of Narva in northeastern Estonia, and

on September 16 laid siege to the city with some

34,000 men. Meanwhile Charles XII, the King of

Sweden, defeated Peter’s ally Denmark and brought

his army to Estonia to relieve the siege. By No-

vember 27 the Russians heard that the Swedes were

approaching, and the next day Peter left the army

to join the approaching Russian reinforcements.

The Russian army deployed in a curved line run-

ning from south to northwest of Narva under the

command of the recently arrived Belgian officer

Duke Eugene de Croy. The traditional Russian gen-

try cavalry under the boyar Boris Sheremetev held

the left (southern) flank near the Narova river. Gen-

erals Adam Weyde (a Dutchman) and prince Ivan

Trubetskoy held the center, and general Avtomon

Golovin the right with the guards regiments, also

by the river. After approaching the Russian line in

a blinding snowstorm, Charles attacked the Russ-

ian center about one o’clock in the afternoon, his

right under general Welling smashing Weyde’s

troops and the Swedish left under General Carl

Gustaf Rehnsköld overrunning Trubetskoy. Only

some of Golovin’s and Sheremetev’s men were able

to escape, with Russian losses at least eight thou-

sand killed. Peter’s army, only recently created

along European lines, was smashed. The battle es-

tablished the eighteen-year-old king of Sweden’s

military reputation.

Peter returned to Novgorod with the remains

of his army, which he rebuilt in the ensuing years

while Charles was preoccupied in Poland. In July

1704 the Russian army returned to besiege Narva,

held by a small Swedish garrison under general

Horn. On August 20, 1704, Narva fell to Peter’s

generals, Sheremetev, now field marshal, and the

Austro-Scottish general Baron Georg Ogilvy. This

victory strengthened Russia’s hold on the Baltic

provinces and further weakened Sweden in its

struggle with Peter.

See also: GREAT NORTHERN WAR; PETER I; SWEDEN, RE-

LATIONS WITH

AUL

A. B

USHKOVITCH

NARYSHKINA, NATALIA KIRILLOVNA

(1652–1694), second wife of Tsar Alexei (r.

1645–1676); mother of Peter I.

Natalia was the daughter of a minor nobleman

who served for a time in Smolensk, but was re-

lated by marriage to the up-and-coming official Ar-

tamon Matveyev, later head of the Foreign Office,

who may have brought her to the attention of

the recently bereaved Tsar Alexei. In 1671 she be-

came the tsar’s second wife, giving birth to Peter

(1672–1725), Natalia (1673–1716), and Fyodora

(1674–1678.) Widowed in 1676, during the early

years of the reign of her stepson Theodore Alex-

eyevich (1676–1682), Natalia and her children were

marginalized; however, when Theodore died in

1682, nine-year-old Peter was elected tsar with the

patriarch’s support, and Natalia prepared to act as

regent. She was thwarted by Tsarevna Sofia Alex-

eyevna and her party, who secured the election of

Tsarevich Ivan Alexeyevich as Peter’s co-tsar. The

fact that Natalia feared for her son’s life during the

riots of 1682 and felt vulnerable during Sofia’s re-

gency may have made her over-protective. After

Sofia was ousted in 1689 and the Naryshkins and

their clients assumed leading posts, there was a

clash of wills between mother and son over such

issues as Peter’s sailing expeditions and his failure

to attend official receptions. The only known por-

traits show Natalia in nun-like widow’s garb with

head modestly covered. She exerted the traditional

influence of a tsaritsa, raising the fortunes of her

clan and their clients, operating her own patron-

age networks, and undertaking public activities

such as alms-giving, visiting shrines, and attend-

ing appropriate court ceremonies, but the business

of government remained in male hands. Natalia

NARYSHKINA, NATALIA KIRILLOVNA

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died in January 1694 and was laid to rest in the

Ascension Convent in the Kremlin. She remains a

shadowy figure.

See also: ALEXEI MIKHAILOVICH; PETER I

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Longworth, Philip. (1984). Alexis: Tsar of All the Russias.

London: Secker and Warburg.

Thyret, Isolde. (2000). Between God and Tsar: Religious

Symbolism and Royal Women of Muscovite Russia,

DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press.

INDSEY

UGHES

NATIONAL LIBRARY OF RUSSIA

The oldest state public library in Russia, the Na-

tional Library of Russia is the second largest library

in the Russian Federation, after the Russian State Li-

brary, with holdings of more than thirty-three mil-

lion volumes, and a national center of librarianship,

bibliography, and book studies.

Founded in St. Petersburg in 1795 by Empress

Catherine II as the Imperial Public Library, the

origins of the National Library of Russia lie in

Catherine’s devotion to the philosophy of the En-

lightenment in the early period of her reign. She

envisioned a library that would serve as a reposi-

tory for all books produced in the Russian empire,

books published in Russian outside the empire, and

books about Russia published in foreign languages,

and that would be open to the Russian public for

the purpose of general social enlightenment. The li-

brary officially opened to the public on January 2,

1814. The nucleus of the original collection was the

collection, brought to St. Petersburg from Warsaw

in 1795, of Counts Józef Andrzej and Andrzej

Stanislaw Zaluski, eminent Polish aristocrats and

bibliophiles. In 1810 Tsar Alexander I signed a spe-

cial statute designating the library as a legal de-

pository entitled to receive two mandatory copies

of imprints produced in the Russian empire.

Throughout its history, the library has had an

enormous influence on the political, cultural, and

scientific life of Russia.

From 1845 to 1861 the library administered

the Rumyantsev Museum that was later moved to

Moscow and eventually became the Russian State

Library. In March 1917 the Imperial Public Library

was renamed the Russian Public Library. With the

consolidation of Soviet power its status was rede-

fined, and in 1925 its name changed to State Pub-

lic Library in Leningrad, as it was designated the

national library of the RSFSR, while the V. I. Lenin

State Library of the USSR (later the Russian State

Library) assumed the function of all-union state li-

brary. In 1932 it was renamed Saltykov-Shchedrin

State Public Library, and a Soviet title of honor was

added to its name in 1939. The library continued

to function during the siege of Leningrad from

1941 to 1944, despite the evacuation of valuable

materials. The Zaluski collection was returned to

Poland between 1921 and 1927 and destroyed dur-

ing World War II. In 1992, after the dissolution of

the USSR, the facility acquired the name Russian

National Library and became one of two national

libraries in the Russian Federation.

The library possesses the world’s most complete

collection of Russian books and periodicals. Among

the highlights of the collections are Slavonic in-

cunabula and other early printed works produced

within and outside of Russia, including two-thirds

of all known sixteenth-century Cyrillic imprints, and

all the known publications of Frantsysk Skaryna; the

largest collection of books from the Petrine era

printed in civil script; and the Free Russian Press col-

lection of approximately 15,000 illegal publications

dating from 1853 to 1917. The Manuscript Division

holds the world’s richest collection of Old Russian

and Slavonic manuscripts from the eleventh to the

seventeenth century. The number of its manuscripts

exceeds 400,000, in more than fifty languages.

Among the library’s other treasures are some

250,000 foreign imprints about Russia produced be-

fore 1917, approximately 6,000 incunabula reflect-

ing the growth of printing in western Europe in

the fifteenth century, and the personal library of

Voltaire, consisting of some 7,000 volumes. It pos-

sesses archives of more than 1,300 public figures,

writers, scholars, artists, composers, architects, and

others, including Peter I, Catherine II, Nicholas II,

Mikhail Kutuzov, Alexander Suvorov, Gavriil

Derzhavin, Ivan Krylov, Vasily Zhukovsky, Alexan-

der Griboyedov, Nikolai Gogol, Mikhail Lermontov,

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Vissarion Belinsky, Alexander

Herzen, Anna Akhmatova, Alexander Blok, Zinaida

Gippius, Dmitry Merezhkovsky, Joseph Brodsky,

Ivan Kramskoy, Boris Kustodiev, Ilya Repin, Vasily

Stasov, Mikhail Glinka, Modest Mussorgsky, Niko-

lai Rimsky-Korsakov, Peter Tchaikovsky, Fyodor

Chaliapin, and Michel Fokine.

The main building, completed in 1801 on the

corner of Nevsky Prospect and Sadovaya Street,

was designed in the classical style by Yegor Sokolov.

NATIONAL LIBRARY OF RUSSIA

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Additions to the building were made over the

years, and a large facility was completed in 1998

on Moskovsky Prospect. By virtue of its long-

standing role as custodian of Russia’s cultural her-

itage, the library holds a unique place in Russian

history and is recognized as one of the foremost

cultural institutions of the Russian Federation.

See also: ARCHIVES; CATHERINE II; EDUCATION; GOLDEN

AGE OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE; RUSSIAN STATE LIBRARY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Kasinec, Edward, and Davis, Robert H., Jr. (2001). “Na-

tional Library of Russia.” In International Dictionary

of Library Histories, vol. 2, ed. David H. Stam. Chicago:

Fitzroy Dearborn.

The National Library of Russia, 1795–1995. (1995). Saint

Petersburg: Liki Rossii.

Stuart, Mary. (1986). Aristocrat-Librarian in Service to the

Tsar: Aleksei Nikolaevich Olenin and the Imperial Pub-

lic Library. Boulder, CO: East European Monographs.

ANICE

T. P

ILCH

NATIONALISM IN THE ARTS

After the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars,

artists throughout Europe increasingly turned their

attention to defining national identities. Although

art and culture had performed this task prior to

Napoleon, the events of the late eighteenth and

early nineteenth centuries provided a focus for a

renewed attention to nationalism in the arts. Rus-

sia proved no exception to this cultural trend, and

particularly after 1812, Russian cultural figures be-

gan to articulate ideas about Russianness. These de-

finitions were varied in nature, but all sought to

depict what made Russia unique. During the cen-

tury after Napoleon’s defeat, Russian culture came

into its own, as literature, art, music, architecture,

decorative arts, and popular culture experienced

profound changes. The attempt to articulate Russ-

ian nationalism provided a dominant theme of

these diverse products, and the figures who ad-

dressed it include a who’s who of Russian artistic

giants: Pushkin, Repin, and Mussorgsky are just a

few of the names associated with Russian nation-

alism in the arts.

SOURCES OF NATIONALISM

Like the other European artists who responded to

the Napoleonic era with an outburst of national-

ism, Russians defined this identity in terms of Rus-

sian uniqueness. Artists looked to Russia’s past and

its present situation to find inspiration. In partic-

ular, several events shaped the way in which Russ-

ian nationalism developed in the arts. Peter the

Great’s “cultural revolution” loomed large in the

minds of nineteenth-century Russian cultural fig-

ures. At issue was whether or not Peter’s attempts

to Westernize Russia placed it on the right histor-

ical development or destroyed a more organic cul-

ture. After the war against Napoleon, this debate

heated up, for many Russians came to think that

the West, and particularly France, no longer served

as a model worth imitating. Russian elites began to

look to the period before Peter the Great as a source

of inspiration. Old Muscovy represented a more au-

thentic Russia, one idealized by some as a time

when the country remained unspoiled by Western

influences. This debate crystallized after Peter Chaa-

dayev published his First Philosophical Letter in

1836, a momentous year for Russian culture and

for the expression of nationalism within it. In the

letter, Chaadayev argued that Russia’s position

between East and West created a state that had con-

tributed nothing to the world. Russia, in Chaa-

dayev’s view, had no history. The letter in turn

gave birth to the Westernizer-Slavophile debate that

dominated Russian philosophy for several decades,

and it also added fuel to the search for Russian na-

tionalism expressed in the arts.

A second important theme that helped to give

shape to Russian artistic nationalism was the “peas-

ant question.” In part this query stemmed from the

debate over Petrine reforms, for Russian intellectu-

als after 1812 began to turn their attention to the

peasantry as the repository of authentic Russian

culture. Other events and debates that provided in-

spiration for Russian artists included the role of

religion in Russian life; the wars against Turkey

throughout the nineteenth century; Russian ex-

pansion into the Caucasus and Central Asia; the

Crimean War and Great Reforms; and debate over

the role of classical versus traditional forms of cul-

ture. In short, Russian nationalism in the arts de-

veloped at the same time as that of other European

countries, but took the forms it did because of Russ-

ian events, traditions, and intellectual debates.

FORMS AND FIGURES OF

NATIONALISM: LITERATURE,

ART, AND MUSIC

From art to popular culture, Russia’s nineteenth-

century culture gave expression to ideas of Rus-

sianness. Although eighteenth-century writers and

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intellectuals developed ideas about Russian national

consciousness, it took events such as Napoleon’s

1812 invasion to fuel a nationwide, century-long

explosion of art in the search of nationalism. Lit-

erature in many respects took the lead in this quest.

The work of Alexander Pushkin (1799–1837)

helped to establish Russian as a literary language

and the idea that the writer should play a social

role. Pushkin’s importance in the expression of

Russian national identity rested as much with the

myth associated with him as with his verses and

writings themselves. Russia’s cultural self-definition

in many respects centered on the figure of Pushkin,

and the cult surrounding him lasted through the

Soviet period and beyond. Of his numerous writ-

ings, his epic poem “The Bronze Horseman” (1833)

dealt the most directly with Russian identity, and

it captured many of the ambiguities of Peter’s lega-

cies. By the time of his 1837 death, Pushkin had

helped to inspire other writers to search for defin-

itions of Russian nationhood.

Important literary figures that featured promi-

nently in the evolving articulation of Russianness

include some of the giants of nineteenth-century

world literature. Mikhail Lermontov (1814–1841)

wrote about Russian expansion in the Caucasus in

his novel A Hero of Our Time (1840), while his ear-

lier poetry such as “Borodino” (1837) captured the

importance of the 1812 battle. Nikolai Gogol

(1809–1852) became famous for stories of his na-

tive Ukraine, but his tales of St. Petersburg and its

bureaucracies helped to establish the “Petersburg

myth” central to debates about Peter the Great’s

legacy. His play The Inspector General was hailed as

a masterpiece when it appeared in 1836, when even

Nicholas I praised it. Ivan Turgenev’s (1818–1883)

A Hunter’s Sketches (1847) caused a sensation when

it first appeared for its frank portrayal of Russian

serfs. These writings in turn inspired the “age of

the novel,” which was associated above all with

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) and Fyodor Dostoyevsky

(1821–1881). Tolstoy’s War and Peace (1869) be-

came the defining literary expression of the war

against Napoleon, while his Anna Karenina (1877)

dissected the important society issues of its time.

Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment (1866) fur-

thered the “Petersburg myth,” while his works

such as The Possessed (1871–1872) and The Broth-

ers Karamazov (1880) described the revolutionary

movements in Russia and their impact. These writ-

ings motivated the next great wave of literature

that explored Russian society after the Great Re-

forms, particularly in the works of Anton Chekhov

(1860–1904), whose plays capture the rural gen-

try’s problems coping in the postemancipation

era; and Andrei Bely’s symbolist masterpiece, Pe-

tersburg (1913), which again redefined the Petrine

capital as an apocalyptic site struggling with mod-

ernization.

Art proved no less important to the articula-

tion of nationalism in nineteenth-century Russia.

The driving force behind all artistic production in

Russia was the Imperial Academy in St. Petersburg.

The Academy stressed classical themes, and as a

result, very few paintings with exclusively Russ-

ian subjects appeared before the 1850s. The major

exception to this trend was Alexei Venetsianov

(1780–1847), who first came to prominence

through his nationalist caricatures published dur-

ing the war of 1812. Although not trained in the

Academy, Venetsianov was influenced by it in his

early artistic life. After the war, however, he

painted idealized scenes of Russian rural life, in-

cluding such works as The Threshing Floor (1820).

Venetsianov’s work and the school he founded,

along with the writings of Pushkin, Gogol, and

others, helped to inspire future artists who depicted

Russia’s landscape as a source of its identity. Alexei

Savrasov (1830–1897), Ivan Shishkin (1832–1898),

and Isaak Levitan (1860–1890) all painted scenes

from Russia over the course of the century, and

their works defined the landscape on its own terms.

Outside of landscape art, the dictates of the

Academy ruled over Russian artistic life. Although

classical imagery dominated, works such as Karl

Briullov’s The Last Days of Pompei, which was ex-

hibited in 1836 and much discussed as a symbol

of Russian decline, were hailed as harbingers of a

new national art. In 1863, however, a group of

Academy students refused to follow the rigid de-

mands of the school and broke away from it, rev-

olutionizing Russian art and its articulation of

nationalism in the process. The group called them-

selves the peredvizhniki, or “the wanderers,” and

they dedicated themselves to painting scenes from

Russian contemporary and historical life. Ilya Re-

pin (1844–1930), the most famous, was a former

serf whose depictions of peasant life such as Barge

Haulers on the Volga (1870) redefined the “peasant

question” in the wake of the 1861 emancipation.

Other artists, such as Vasily Surikov (1848–1916),

painted scenes from Muscovy and the Petrine era.

The work of the peredvizhniki found support from

powerful patrons such as Pavel Tretyakov, whose

private gallery became the basis for the museum

of Russian art in Moscow that bears his name.

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

Music was the third part of the cultural troika

that defined Russian national identity during the

nineteenth century. Musical life revitalized itself af-

ter 1812 and took off during the 1860s. Romantic

and patriotic tunes developed during the first half of

the century and found their greatest expression in

the works of Mikhail Glinka (1804–1857). Glinka’s

opera A Life for the Tsar debuted in 1836 and told the

story of the peasant Ivan Susanin, who sacrificed his

life during the Times of Troubles to save the young

Mikhail Romanov. The opera was hailed as the be-

ginnings of a national school in Russian music.

Glinka’s works paved the way for the founda-

tion of the Russian Musical Society in 1859. The

society, founded by the brothers Nikolai and

Anton Rubinstein, in turn established conservato-

ries in St. Petersburg and Moscow. The conserva-

tories stressed European musical techniques and

training, and their most famous student was Petr

Tchaikovsky (1840–1893). Almost immediately af-

ter the founding of the conservatories, a group of

composers known as the Mighty Handful, or just

“the five,” rebelled against the stress on European

music. Their musical scores instead included folk

songs and Russian religious music. The most fa-

mous and consistent practitioner of this approach

was Modest Mussorgsky (1839–1881), whose

best-known works are the historical operas Boris

Godunov (1869) and Khovanshchina (1886), which

told the stories of the tragic Muscovite tsar and

events early in the reign of Peter the Great, respec-

tively. Mussorgsky used the work of Pushkin as

the libretto for the former and claimed that the

paintings of Repin inspired the latter. Tchaikovsky,

although derided as not Russian enough by the

Mighty Handful, also composed works that in turn

became associated with the musical expression of

Russianness. His ballets Swan Lake (1875–1876),

Sleeping Beauty (1888–1889), and The Nutcracker

(1891–1892) remain among the most popular and

most performed in Russia and abroad, while his

“1812 Overture” (1880) is synonymous with pa-

triotic music throughout the world.

Although literature, art, and music served as the

most important media through which Russian

artists articulated their views on national identity,

other cultural forms did the same. By the early twen-

tieth century, the Russian ballet of Sergei Diaghilev,

featuring music by Igor Stravinsky and sets designed

by artists of the Russian avant garde, became an im-

portant tool for expressing ideas of Russianness, par-

ticularly abroad. Throughout the century, churches,

monuments, and other architectural sites literally

built upon ideas of Russian history and culture, from

the Alexandrine column dedicated to 1812 in St.

Petersburg to the millennium memorial in Novgorod

that commemorated the founding of the Russian

state. Even decorative arts, including jewelry and

porcelain, helped to pioneer the “Russian Style”

(russky stil) by the late 1800s.

Popular culture also dealt with themes of Russ-

ian nationalism and Russia’s past. Lubki, prints and

chapbooks that originated during the seventeenth

century, circulated throughout Russia and served

as important sources for the expression of national

identity and for the dissemination of ideas pro-

moted in other artistic forms. Russian folk art and

music was rediscovered by numerous artists over

the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth

centuries, and helped to inspire works from Mus-

sorgsky’s melodies to Wassily Kandinsky’s can-

vases. Moreover, the works of all the artists

mentioned above became more widely known

through the growth of newspapers, journals, mu-

seums, and cultural life throughout Russia.

Russian nationalism expressed in the arts con-

tained a multitude of ideas. For some, “Russia” rep-

resented a European state that had developed its

own sense of identity since Peter the Great. For oth-

ers, “Russia” had produced a unique culture that

blended East with West. Although no consensus on

Russian national identity existed, Russian cultural

figures from Pushkin to Tolstoy to Mussorgsky all

strove to define it in their own way and all left im-

portant manifestations of Russianness in their

works.

See also: ARCHITECTURE; BALLET; CHAADAYEV, PETER

YAKOVLEVICH; MIGHTY HANDFUL; MUSIC; SLAVO-

PHILES; WESTERNIZERS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Billington, James. (1966). The Icon and the Axe: An Inter-

pretive History of Russian Culture. New York: Knopf.

Brumfield, William. (1993). A History of Russian Archi-

tecture. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Cracraft, James. (2003). The Revolution of Peter the Great.

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Cracraft, James, and Rowland, Daniel, eds. (2003). Ar-

chitectures of Russian Identity: 1500 to the Present.

Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Ely, Christopher. (2002). This Meager Nature: Landscape

and National Identity in Imperial Russia. DeKalb:

Northern Illinois University Press.

Figes, Orlando. (2002). Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural His-

tory of Russia. New York: Metropolitan Books.

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

Garafola, Lynn, and Baer, Nancy Van Norman, eds.

(1999). The Ballet Russes and Its World. New Haven,

CT: Yale University Press.

Gray, Camilla. (1986). The Russian Experiment in Art,

1863-1922. London: Thames and Hudson.

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

Indiana University Press.

Lincoln, W. Bruce. (1998). Between Heaven and Hell: The

Story of a Thousand Years of Artistic Life in Russia.

New York: Viking.

Marks, Steven. (2002). How Russia Shaped the Modern

World: From Art to Anti–Semitism, Ballet to Bolshe-

vism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Rogger, Hans. (1960). National Consciousness in Eighteenth–

Century Russia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University

Press.

Rzhevsky, Nicholas, ed. (1998). The Cambridge Compan-

ion to Modern Russian Culture. Cambridge, UK: Cam-

bridge University Press.

Stavrou, Theofanis, ed. (1983). Art and Culture in Nine-

teenth–Century Russia. Bloomington: Indiana Uni-

versity Press.

Taruskin, Richard. (1997). Defining Russia Musically.

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Tolz, Vera. (2001). Russia: Inventing the Nation. London:

Arnold.

Valkenier, Elizabeth Kridl. (1989). Russian Realist Art: The

State and Society; the Peredvizhniki and Their Tradi-

tion. New York: Columbia University Press.

TEPHEN

M. N

ORRIS

NATIONALISM IN THE SOVIET UNION

The triumph of the October Revolution and collapse

of the Russian empire increased national move-

ments among the different nationalities that lived

in the country. The Bolshevik government based its

nationalities policy on the principles of Marxist-

Leninist ideology. According to these principles, all

nations should disappear with time, and national-

ism was considered a bourgeois ideology. However,

the Bolshevik leaders saw that the revolutionary

potential inherent in nationalism could advance the

revolution, and thus supported the ideas of self-de-

termination of the nations.

The Declaration of the Rights of the People of

Russia, proclaimed one month after the October

Revolution on November 21, 1917, recognized four

major principles:

1. equality and sovereignty of the peoples of the

Russian empire;

2. the right of nations to self-determination;

3. abolition of all privileges based on nationality

or religion;

4. freedom and cultural development for national

minorities (i.e., dispersed nationalities and those

living outside their historic territories).

But, after the official declaration of the princi-

ples, the Soviet government resisted the realization

of these ideals. Even in the cases of Finland and

Poland, whose right to independence was ac-

knowledged by Vladimir Lenin before the revolu-

tion, acceptance of their independence was given by

the Bolsheviks only reluctantly, after several at-

tempts to reverse independence failed. During the

Soviet-Polish war of 1920, Bolshevik leaders tried

to install a pro-Soviet Polish government, however,

they lost the war and thus did not achieve their

goal. Of all the different nations which coexisted

uneasily in the Russian empire, only Poland, Fin-

land and Baltic countries (Latvia, Lithuania, and Es-

tonia) received independence after the October

Revolution. However, the Baltic countries remained

independent only until 1940, when the Soviet

Army occupied their territory.

After the October Revolution, Soviet leaders had

hoped for the sparking of a socialist revolution

throughout the world. Bolshevik leader Leon Trot-

sky proposed the doctrine of “Permanent Revolu-

tion” that would spread from country to country.

However, this was not to be the reality. By the be-

ginning of the 1920s it became obvious even to the

Soviet leaders that autonomous nations would re-

main.

The final goal of the Soviet national policy was

the integration of all national groups into a uni-

versal (communist) empire. However, their short

and medium-term strategies were completely dif-

ferent, so far as they encouraged the emergence of

sub-imperial nationalities, in hopes that such mat-

uration was a necessary historical stage which had

to be traversed before proletarian internationalism

could become fully effective.

INTERNATIONAL RESISTANCE

TO THE SOVIET REGIME

Different nations of the former Russian empire be-

lieved that the collapse of the monarchy gave them

a chance for independence. The establishment of So-

viet power in the national republics was strongly

resisted. The Russian empire had the reputation as

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the “prison of nations,” thus, nationalities that

were newly liberated from the one yoke after the

February 1917 revolution did not rush into another

bondage. But the resistance of the various nations

was not strong enough to defend their indepen-

dence. When the Ukraine National Republic declared

independence in 1918, Soviet Russia began its ag-

gression against the newly minted country. The re-

sulting civil war in Ukraine continued for more

than three years and ended with the annexation of

Ukraine by Russia.

As the Soviet regime was established in Central

Asia, native military units called Basmachi re-

claimed those territories from the communists.

During the fall of 1921 most of eastern Bukhara

was under control of the Basmachi rebels. The Bas-

machi movement was divided, and its lack of uni-

fied leadership contributed to its defeat. But the

resistance of the Central Asian nations against the

Soviet regime continued until the middle of the

1920s.

FORMATION OF THE SOVIET UNION

The Soviet Union was formally established on De-

cember 30, 1922. The largest nations of the Soviet

Union were allowed their own national republics

while the smaller nations had either autonomy or

national districts in the territory of national re-

publics and were considered national minorities.

The Soviet Constitution of 1924 established the

various levels of national-territorial autonomy and

a two-chamber Supreme Soviet (Parliament). The

Soviet of the Union was elected from the equally

populated electoral districts. The Soviet of Nation-

alities was formed of delegates elected from the

national republics and regions, with each national-

territorial unit having equal status and electing the

same number of delegates.

THE POLICY OF KORENIZATSIA

From the 1920s to the first half of the 1930s the

main thrust of the national policy in the Soviet

Union was of korenizatsia (indigenization, from the

term korennoi narod, meaning “indigenous people”).

This policy focused on the promotion of each na-

tion’s leadership cadre and support for development

of national languages and cultures. The high au-

thorities believed that the policy of korenizatsia

would encourage non-Russian nationalities to sup-

port the Soviet regime. The plan had some limited

success. The Soviet central government received

support from the national communists and part of

the non-Russian population. After their poor

treatment in the Russian empire, national minori-

ties favored the internationalism and national

equality in the Soviet Union. The policy of kor-

enizatsia had long-lasting effects and promoted na-

tional cultures and national consciousness among

the different nations. Thus in the national republics

the national languages were made compulsory in

schools and offices, national theaters were opened,

and books and newspapers were printed in local

languages. However, many nations were more or

less assimilated into Russian culture and resisted

the policy of korenizatsia. Many parents resisted

sending their children to the national schools and

in the national republics there was considerable re-

sistance to the official use of the national languages.

Korenizatsia was especially difficult for the Russ-

ian population of the national republics consider-

ing that they were used to being the politically

dominant population in the Russian empire. Fur-

thermore, Russian nationalists could not tolerate

their new status as equals of the other nationali-

ties of the Soviet Union.

THE RISE OF RUSSIAN NATIONALISM

IN THE SOVIET UNION

From the second half of the 1930s the national pol-

icy of the Soviet Union lost its internationalist col-

oring. The Soviet leaders enhanced the role of the

Russian nation and diminished the relative impor-

tance of all others. However, during the Soviet era,

all nations became of the victims of sovietization

and even Russians were not exempt from this pol-

icy. Peasant communities were destroyed, religious

institutions devastated, and even the best of the na-

tional literatures, music, and art were forbidden for

their “anti-socialist contents.”

Many Soviet political campaigns affected spe-

cific nationalities more than others. For example,

the collectivization and mass deportations of rich

peasants to Siberia devastated the Ukraine. There

the local population had more severely resisted col-

lectivization, and Soviet authorities forcibly took all

crops from the peasants. The result of this policy

was horrible starvation in Ukraine in 1932–1933

that took the lives of six to seven million people.

Another example was the forced settlement of the

nomadic population, which decimated the Kazakhs.

Also, purges of the national cadres greatly affected

the Jews. By the end of the 1930s almost all Jews

were dismissed from leading positions in the Com-

munist Party of the Soviet Union and in the gov-

ernment.

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During and after World War II, Soviet author-

ities encouraged the rise of Russian nationalism. In

a victory speech, Josef Stalin talked about the spe-

cial qualities of the Russian people that achieved

victory in the war. The new Soviet national an-

them emphasized the role of the Great Russia in the

creation of the Soviet Union. By the beginning of

the 1940s all leaders of the national republics and

regions were merely puppets of Moscow and

showed complete obedience to the general national

policy of the Soviet government.

At the same time there was an increase in chau-

vinism in the Soviet Union. In the official Soviet

ideology there appeared the term “unreliable” na-

tionalities. Accused nationalities were the subject of

deportation and collective punishment, based on al-

legations of collaboration with the Nazis. As the

result of this policy, the Volga Germans, Chechens,

Crimean Tartars and dozens of smaller nationali-

ties were deported from their homelands to Central

Asia and Kazakhstan. Under Stalin, fifty-six na-

tionalities, involving about 3.5 million people, were

deported to Siberia and Central Asia.

After World War II the Jewish intelligentsia was

persecuted during the political campaign of struggle

against “cosmopolitanism.” Almost all those who

were accused of cosmopolitanism and pro-Western

orientation were Jewish. This accusation was fol-

lowed by loss of employment and by imprisonment.

In 1952 the elite of the Jewish intelligentsia, in-

cluding prominent scientists and Yiddish writers and

poets, were secretly tried, convicted, and executed.

The anti-Jewish campaign reached its height in the

Soviet Union in 1952 with the investigation of the

“Jewish doctors’ plot.” Jewish doctors were accused

of intentionally providing incorrect treatments and

poisoning the leaders of the Communist Party. These

political campaigns provoked mass hysteria and the

rise of anti-Semitism among the local population.

The growing anti-Semitism was supposed to be a

prelude to the planned deportation all Soviet Jews

to Birobidzhan in the Far East. Only the death of

Stalin on March 5, 1953, saved the Jewish popula-

tion from deportation.

NATIONALITIES POLICY IN THE

SOVIET UNION: POST-STALIN

PERIOD, 1953–1991

First Secretary of the Communist Party Nikita

Khrushchev rehabilitated the repressed nationalities

and allowed most of them to return to their orig-

inal homes. The main exceptions were the Crimean

Tartars and Volga Germans, because their lands

had been taken over by Russians and Ukrainians.

However, the national policy of Khrushchev was

not consistent. In 1954 he presented the Crimea to

Ukraine as “a gift” in spite of the fact that the ma-

jority of the population in Crimea was Russian.

During Leonid Brezhnev’s leadership the slogan

Friendship of Nations became the rule and all na-

tional conflicts were explained as hooliganism. Fur-

ther, all publications about national conflicts were

forbidden in the Soviet Union. However, the friend-

ship of nations existed more on paper than in re-

ality. After some liberalization and decreasing

repression during the Khrushchev and Brezhnev

years, the national intelligentsia attempted to dis-

cuss national problems and explore their histories

and cultures. However, the Soviet leaders contin-

ued to consider nationalism as a bourgeois phe-

nomena and many representatives of the national

intelligentsia, who called for national independence,

were arrested and exiled in Siberia. Soviet leaders

had a double standard toward Russian nationalism

versus the nationalism of the other nations of the

Soviet Union. Thus the expression of Russian su-

periority over other nations was permitted. Movies,

paintings, and novels were created about the heroic

Russian past. The official Soviet ideology called the

Russian nation the “older brother” of all national-

ities of the Soviet Union.

Meanwhile expressions of national feelings by

the non-Russian nations were suppressed. Even

demonstrations of respect for some distinguished

national figures from the past were forbidden. Thus

Soviet authorities forbade gatherings near the mon-

ument of the distinguished nineteenth-century

Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko, nor could flow-

ers be put on his monument on anniversary of his

birth. Many members of the Ukrainian national in-

telligentsia spent years in prison and in exile dur-

ing Brezhnev’s time in power. Ukraine was the

second largest republic of the Soviet Union in

population after the Russian Federation, and a sig-

nificant part of the Ukrainian population wanted

independence. During World War II Ukrainian na-

tionalists organized military units that fought

against both the Nazis and the Soviet Army. Thus

Ukrainian nationalism was considered by the So-

viet rulers as one of the most serious threats to na-

tional unity and was severely suppressed.

The population of the Baltic republics, Latvia,

Lithuania, and Estonia, often expressed their anti-

Russian and anti-Soviet sentiments during the

Khrushchev and Brezhnev times. Soviet authority

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