Encyclopedia of Russian History

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According to Chayanov, the basic principle for

understanding the peasant economy was the balance

between the household member as a laborer and as

a consumer. Peasant households and their members

could either increase the number of hours they

worked, or work more intensively, or sometimes

both. The calculation made by households whether

to work more or not was subjective, based upon an

estimate of how much production was needed for

survival (consumption) and how much was desired

for investment to increase the family’s productive

potential. Those estimates were balanced against the

unattractiveness of agricultural labor. Households

sought to reach an equilibrium between production

increases and the disutility of increased labor. In

short, households increased their production as long

as production gains outweighed the negative aspects

of increased labor. This principle of labor production

in the peasant economy led Chayanov to argue that

the optimal size of the agricultural production unit

varied according to the sector of production at a time

the official policy of the Communist Party of the So-

viet Union was pushing for large collective farms.

As a result of this disagreement with Marxist econ-

omists and the Party line, Chayanov was arrested

in 1930 and executed in 1939.

Josef Stalin’s collectivization, begun in 1929,

fundamentally changed the basis of the Russian

peasant economy by forcibly incorporating house-

holds into large farms, the latter becoming the ba-

sic production unit of Soviet agriculture. Moreover,

production decisions were removed from the house-

hold and were no longer based upon the demo-

graphic composition of the household.

Even during the Stalin period, however, peas-

ant resistance to mass collectivization and food

shortages forced a compromise that allowed contin-

ued small-scale agricultural production by house-

holds in kitchen gardens or so-called private plots,

and the sale of a portion of their produce at farm

markets, which were free from state control. Con-

sequently, peasant agriculture did not disappear

with collectivization and continues to survive in

Russia during the early twenty-first century, but

on a much reduced scale.

See also: CHAYANOV, ALEXANDER VASILIEVICH; COLLEC-

TIVIZATION OF AGRICULTURE; PEASANTRY; STALIN,

JOSEF VISSARIONOVICH

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Chayanov, A. V. (1966). The Theory of Peasant Economy,

ed. Daniel Thorner, Basile Kerblay, and R. E. F. Smith.

Homewood, IL: Irwin.

Danilov, Viktor P. (1988). Rural Russia under the New

Regime. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Scott, James C. (1976). The Moral Economy of the Peas-

ant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia. New

Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

TEPHEN

K. W

EGREN

PEASANTRY

The original agriculturists of the northern Eurasian

plain lived a communal, seminomadic existence,

based on slash-and-burn cultivation. By the time

of Kievan Rus, the defining characteristics of a peas-

antry were in already in evidence: an agricultural

population bound by trade and tribute to a wider

world, but in an incomplete and dependent way.

Princes imposed taxes and compulsory services, but

only with the rise of Muscovy (from the fifteenth

to seventeenth centuries) were peasants enserfed—

permanently bound to their lords or lands. Despite

periodic revolts, this condition continued until

1861.

Peter I inaugurated a campaign of Westerniza-

tion that imitated European modes of life and

government. Perhaps ironically, in an age when

Western Europe was abandoning serfdom, these

initiatives increased the exploitation, as well as the

traditionalism, of Russian peasants. St. Petersburg’s

Italianate palaces were built with conscripted peas-

ant labor, and Russia’s new Western-style army

and bureaucracy were supported by a range of new

taxes, among them the “soul tax” that was now

demanded of peasants on top of the dues they paid

their lords. Exploitation, however, was often indi-

rect. The village commune (obshchina) distributed

lands and obligations among its members, serving

as a buffer between peasants and the outside world.

Although peasants generally regarded the cities

and the Europeanized elite with suspicion, they

were not totally isolated from urban society. Per-

manently bound to the soil, they could still depart

temporarily to earn money in crafts, trade, or wage

employment. In some provinces more than half the

adult males engaged in work away from villages.

A few even became millionaires.

Peasant agriculture flourished among the Slavic

(and mainly Orthodox Christian) population of the

Russian Empire. During the eighteenth century

arable cultivation expanded into the steppe grass-

PEASANTRY

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

lands of the south and southeast, and some serf-

owners tried to introduce new crops and systems

of cultivation into these regions. Most, however,

left peasants to organize and cultivate the land ac-

cording to traditional norms. Under communal

tenure, which flourished among Russian peasants

but not among Ukrainians and other non-Russians,

each household received strips of land in many dif-

ferent fields. The number of these could be increased

or decreased to match a family’s ability to work.

Grains were planted in a fixed rotation, and crop

yields were often disappointing, even in areas of

higher fertility.

Russia’s defeat in the Crimean War (1855) con-

vinced its leaders to modernize, and the result was

a vast array of reforms, foremost among them

emancipation of the serfs in 1861. For the sake of

social stability, former serf owners were generously

compensated, retaining a substantial share of the

land. Freed peasants had to reimburse the state for

their land. The commune kept the job of distribut-

ing lands and tax obligations. This arrangement

produced little innovation and less prosperity,

though migration to Western Siberia during the

later nineteenth century did offer some hopeful

signs of change. At the end of the nineteenth cen-

tury crop yields grew more rapidly than the pop-

ulation, and the Russian Empire became a major

exporter of grain and other agricultural products.

In the general census of 1897, the empire had

a population of 125,000,000, of whom roughly

three-fourths were legally classified as peasants,

and an even greater proportion resided in rural ar-

eas. Peasant unrest was endemic, and in the revo-

lution of 1905–1907 peasants rose up to confiscate

private lands and drive off their former lords. Harsh

punishment was followed by a new (“Stolypin”)

land reform promoted by Prime Minister Peter

PEASANTRY

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

Russian peasant women in the 1930s show their support for efforts to strengthen the collective farm system. © A

USTRIAN

RCHIVES

/CORBIS

Stolypin, designed to replace communal tenure

with private ownership, but the outbreak of World

War I prevented its full implementation. In 1917,

unrest returned. Private lands were seized and re-

distributed and manor houses destroyed. The vil-

lage commune took on a new life.

At this time peasants were roughly eighty per-

cent of Russia’s population, impoverished, tradition-

minded, and suspicious of outsiders. Vladimir

Lenin’s Bolshevik (Communist) Party tried to en-

list them in its revolution, but needed their grain

and labor power more than their goodwill. During

the Civil War of 1917–1922 and later during the

industrialization drive of the 1930s the Party re-

sorted to confiscation and coercion. Poor and land-

less peasants were thought to be natural allies of

the urban proletariat, but efforts to promote class

warfare in the villages produced instability and

food shortages. Under Josef Stalin’s leadership col-

lective agriculture was forcibly introduced, but in-

stead of producing efficiency it caused disruption

and starvation, with the loss of millions of lives.

After several years of turmoil peasants were as-

sured the right to cultivate small private plots

alongside their duties to the collective farm

(kolkhoz). Throughout the following decades these

plots produced a vastly disproportionate share of

the country’s food.

The Soviet Union became an urban industrial

society, but its rural roots were poorly nourished.

At the time the USSR ceased to exist, some twenty-

five percent of Russia’s population continued to

lived on the land, resistant (for the most part) to

privatization or economic reform.

See also: AGRICULTURE; COLLECTIVIZATION OF AGRICUL-

TURE; ENSERFMENT; PEASANT ECONOMY; SERFDOM

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Blum, Jerome. (1961). Lord and Peasant in Russia.Prince-

ton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Moon, David. (1999). The Russian Peasantry, 1600–1930:

The World the Peasants Made. New York: Addison-

Wesley.

Robinson, Geroid T. (1932). Rural Russia Under the Old

Regime: A History of the Landlord-Peasant World and

a Prologue to the Peasant Revolution of 1917. London

and New York: Longmans, Green and Company.

Shanin, Teodor. (1985). The Roots of Otherness: Russia’s

Turn of Century. New Haven, CT: Yale University

Press.

OBERT

E. J

OHNSON

PEASANT UPRISINGS

Also known as “Peasant wars”; peasant uprisings

in broad usage, were a number of rural-based re-

bellions from the seventeenth to the twentieth cen-

turies, a typical form of protest in Russia against

socioeconomic, religious, and cultural oppression

and, occasionally, against political power holders.

Peasant uprisings in the narrow sense belong

to the period of serfdom. Most of them followed

a significant worsening of the conditions of the

peasantry. The four major rebellions of this period

were led by: 1) Ivan Bolotnikov, 1606–1607; 2)

Stepan (“Stenka”) Razin, 1667–1671; 3) Kondrat

Bulavin, 1707–1708; and 4) the largest of all, by

Yemelyan (“Yemelka”) Pugachev, 1773–1775. The

leadership in each case was largely symbolic, as an

inherent feature of peasant wars was anarchic

spontaneity with little organization, subordination,

and planning.

The geographic center of the uprisings was in

Southern Russia, between the Don and the Volga

rivers and between the Black and the Caspian seas.

However, they spread over wider territories and, in

the case of the Bolotnikov rebellion, involved a bat-

tle in the vicinity of Moscow (which the rebels lost,

in December 1606). The key initiative was played

by Cossacks (Razin and Bulavin were Cossack ata-

mans, and Pugachev a prominent Cossack as well).

The rank and file included serfs and free peasants,

as well as ethnic and religious minorities (e.g.,

Tatars in the Razin rebellion and Bashkirs in the

Pugachev rebellion; ethnically Russian Old Believ-

ers in the Razin, Bulavin, and Pugachev rebellions).

The Bolotnikov uprising, as part of the Time of

Troubles, also involved impoverished or discon-

tented gentry, some of whom, however, parted

company with the rebels at a crucial stage. The re-

ligious and cultural aspect of the uprisings reflected

discontent with top-down autocratic reforms along

foreign patterns. Some also view the uprisings as

a cultural response of the Cossack frontier to ex-

cess regulation by the imperial center.

Rebel demands are known from their own doc-

uments (e.g., “Seductive Letters” issued by Razin)

and government reports. These demands involved

land redistribution, the change of peasants’ status

from serfs to Cossacks, and often the elimination

of the privileged classes. None of the uprisings was

directed against the institution of monarchy; some

rebels allied themselves with contenders to the

throne (e.g., Bolotnikov with one of the Pseudo-

PEASANT UPRISINGS

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

Dmitrys and then with another self-styled tsare-

vich, Peter), while Bulavin and Pugachev claimed

their own rights to the tsar’s scepter. On the ter-

ritories occupied by rebels, peasants were declared

free of servitude and debt, and Cossack-style self-

rule was decreed. The uprisings were characterized

by mass casualties and brutality on both sides. All

of them were violently suppressed and their lead-

ers executed; in the longer run, they may have

spurred policy changes and reform efforts ema-

nating from the top.

The most famous Pugachev rebellion was dis-

tinguished by the fact that its leader claimed to be

Tsar Peter III (the actual tsar was murdered a decade

earlier, in 1762, in a coup that brought his wife,

Catherine II, to power). He issued his first mani-

festo in this capacity in September 1773. Pugachev

promised to give peasants “back” their freedom

“stolen” from them by the gentry, making them

into Cossacks. The army of his followers counted

about twenty-five thousand people. This rebellion

was the first one of the manufacturing era, and

was joined by serfs laboring at the manufactures

in the Urals. Its suppression was followed in the

short run by the strengthening and further spread

of the institution of serfdom, as well as the incor-

poration of Cossacks into the state bureaucracy.

During the nineteenth century, peasant uprisings

never rose to the scale of wars. A major uprising in

1861 in the Kazan region reflected discontent with

the conditions attached to the emancipation of the

serfs.

Peasant guerrilla culture in Russia (as in some

other countries) involved the operation of a paral-

lel, or shadow community beyond the reach of

the state, abruptly revealing itself in mass action.

Guerrilla tactics followed by peasant rebels played

a role in the twentieth-century revolutions (both

on the Bolshevik and anti-Bolshevik side), due to

the numerical and cultural influence of peasantry

(or recent peasants among urban workers and the

intelligentsia). These tactics were also employed in

defense against foreign invasions (the 1812 Patri-

otic War and World War II).

Scholars emphasizing the continuity of peasant

resistance over centuries view the revolutions of

1905–1907 and 1917 as a resumption of peasant

wars, in a different socioeconomic environment.

Some of them consider the 1917–1933 period as

“the Great Peasant War” suppressed by Josef Stalin

through artificially organized famine and collec-

tivization of the peasantry.

Peasant wars figured prominently in Russian

folklore and modern arts. Alexander Pushkin, in

characterizing a “Russian rebellion” as “senseless

and merciless,” perpetuated the view of peasant

wars as destructive explosions, characterized by

savage brutality on both sides, after seemingly end-

less patience of the oppressed. Revolutionary de-

mocrats of the Populist tradition cultivated a heroic

image of peasant rebels, while orthodox Marxists

dismissed them as anarchists and enemies of the

modernizing state.

See also: BOLOTNIKOV, IVAN ISAYEVICH; COSSACKS;

DMITRY, FALSE; PEASANTRY; PUGACHEV, EMELIAN

IVANOVICH

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Avrich, Paul (1976). Russian Rebels, 1600–1800. New

York: Norton.

Graziosi, Andrea. (1997). The Great Soviet Peasant War:

Bolsheviks and Peasants, 1917–1933. Cambridge, MA:

Harvard University Press.

Longworth, P. (1973). “The Last Great Cossack Peasant

Rising.” Journal of European Studies 3.

Pushkin, Alexander. (1987). Captain’s Daughter. New

York: Hyperion.

Pushkin, Alexander. (2001). The History of Pugachev. Lon-

don: Phoenix.

Raeff, Marc. (1970) “Pugachev’s Rebellion.” In Precondi-

tions of Revolution in Early Modern Europe, eds. Robert

Forster and Jack P. Greene. Baltimore: John Hopkins

Press.

Wolf, Eric (1969). Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century.

New York: Harper & Row.

MITRI

LINSKI

PECHENEGS

During the late ninth century, under the pressure

from the Torky and Khazars, the Pechenegs, a no-

madic Turkic-speaking tribal confederation, mi-

grated from the Volga-Ural region and occupied the

area stretching from the Don-Donets to the

Danube. Like other nomads inhabiting the south-

ern Russian steppe from around 965 to around

1240, the Pechenegs did not create a true state. Po-

litically, they were united into eight tribal unions,

each occupying one of the four provinces (running

in strips from north to south) on each side of the

Dnieper. Disunited, the Pechenegs never threatened

the existence of the Rus state. The Pechenegs raided

PECHENEGS

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

Rus territories and traded such items as livestock

for goods unavailable in nomadic economies (grain

and luxury goods). At other times, they acted as

Rus allies in military campaigns, as in the 944 Rus

war against Byzantium. From 980 onward, they

likewise served as mercenaries in the conflicts be-

tween Rus princes. The Byzantines also used the

Pechenegs to counter the Rus. Thus, in 972, while

returning to Kiev from his Byzantine campaign, the

Pechenegs killed Prince Svyatoslav, probably on the

request of the Byzantines. The Pechenegs’ one major

attack on Kiev was decisively repulsed by Yaroslav

the Wise in 1036. Defeated and under pressure

from the Torky, most Pechenegs migrated toward

the Balkans, where they were massacred by Byzan-

tine-Cuman forces in 1091. The few who remained

joined the Rus border guards known as Chernye

klobuky or Black Hoods. Until around 1010, the

Pechenegs probably practiced shamanist-Täri reli-

gion, but thereafter began to convert to Islam.

See also: KHAZARS; YAROSLAV VLADIMIROVICH

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Golden, Peter B. (1990). “The Peoples of the South Russ-

ian Steppe.” In The Cambridge History of Early Inner

Asia, ed. Denis Sinor. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge

University Press.

Golden, Peter B. (1992). An Introduction to the History of

the Turkic Peoples. Wiesbaden, Germany: Harras-

sowitz Verlag.

Pritsak, Omeljan. (1975). “The Pec



enegs, A Case of So-

cial and Economic Transformation.” Archivum Eurasiae

Medii Aevi 1:211–236.

OMAN

K. K

OVALEV

PEKING, TREATY OF

The Treaty of Peking (November 14, 1860) con-

firmed and extended the territorial gains Russia had

wrested from China in the Treaty of Aigun (1858).

By its terms, the eastern boundary between the two

empires was set along the Amur and Ussuri Rivers.

The Ussuri boundary gave Russia possession of

what became the Maritime Province (Primorskii

Krai). Vladivostok, the major city of the Russian

Far East, was established in this territory, provid-

ing direct access to the Sea of Japan and through

the Pacific Ocean. Therefore, the Treaty of Peking

was the foundation of Russia’s attempts to become

a Pacific power. The treaty also established, for the

first time, a Russo-Chinese boundary line in the

west (Central Asia) according to Russian demands,

and provided for the opening of Russian consulates

in Urga (Mongolia) and Kashgar (Xinjiang). The en-

tire border was opened to free trade between the

two empires.

General Nikolai Ignatiev, appointed Russia’s

minister to China in 1859, took advantage of the

Second Opium War, an Anglo-French conflict with

China, to advance Russia’s imperial interests. At a

moment of supreme danger to the Qing court,

whose capital Beijing the Anglo-French forces had

already occupied and ransacked, Ignatiev offered his

services as mediator to the beleaguered Chinese. He

urged them to accede to the demands of the Anglo-

French expeditionary force while promising to in-

tercede with his fellow Westerners on behalf of the

Chinese. In exchange for his services, which were

actually superfluous, he demanded and received

China’s acceptance of Russia’s own territorial,

diplomatic, and commercial demands.

By the Treaty of Peking, Russia became a full-

fledged player in the Western imperialist assault

upon China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,

and sowed the seeds of Chinese anger that matured

during the twentieth century.

See also: AIGUN, TREATY OF; CHINA, RELATIONS WITH

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Clubb, O. Edmund. (1971). China and Russia : The “Great

Game.” New York: Columbia University Press .

Mancall, Mark. (1971). Russia and China: Their Diplomatic

Relations to 1728. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer-

sity Press.

Paine, S. C. M. (1997). Imperial Rivals: Russia, China, and

Their Disputed Frontier. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.

Quested, Rosemary. (1984). Sino-Russian Relations: A

Short History. Sydney: George Allen and Unwin.

Tien-fong Cheng. (1973). A History of Sino-Russian Rela-

tions. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press (reprint of

Public Affairs Press, 1957).

TEVEN

I. L

EVINE

PELEVIN, VIKTOR OLEGOVICH

(b. 1962), novelist and short-story writer.

Born in Moscow to a military family, Viktor

Olegovich Pelevin received his education at the

PELEVIN, VIKTOR OLEGOVICH

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

Moscow Energy Institute and the Gorky Institute

of World Literature (Moscow). Praised and panned

by critics ever since his work first gained public

recognition during the early 1990s, Pelevin has

been a controversial figure in the Russian literary

establishment. Nonetheless, he is one of the most

important figures in the world of post-Soviet let-

ters. Pelevin is virtually the only serious writer in

contemporary Russia to gain a wide readership,

appealing in particular to the burgeoning youth

counterculture.

Pelevin’s works can be classified broadly as

satire, but the author’s concerns are more cultural

and metaphysical than political. His first short

novel, Omon Ra (1992), tells the story of a young

man who dreams of being a cosmonaut, only to

discover that the entire Soviet space program is a

government-perpetrated fraud masking the coun-

try’s inability to launch a single rocket. Pelevin’s

second novel, The Life of Insects (1993), reveals the

preoccupation with Eastern mysticism and hallu-

cinogenic drugs that characterize both his subse-

quent novels and many of the short stories

collected in The Blue Lantern (1991) and The Yellow

Arrow (1998). His 1996 novel Buddha’s Little Fin-

ger combines an absurdist approach to Soviet cul-

tural heroes with an equally ironic satire of

Western popular culture (Arnold Schwarzenegger

makes a brief appearance). In 1999 he published

Babylon, which reflects his ongoing fascination

with computer culture and virtual reality. Baby-

lon is populated both by real human beings and

digitally constructed simulacra, and the resem-

blance between the two is enhanced by Pelevin’s

longstanding rejection of the traditions of Russian

psychological realism.

See also: SCIENCE FICTION; SOCIALIST REALISM

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dalton-Brown, Sally. (1997). “Ludic Nonchalance or Lu-

dicrous Despair? Viktor Pelevin and Russian Post-

modernist Prose.” Slavonic and East European Review

75(2):216–233.

Genis, Alexander. (1999). “Borders and Metamorphoses:

Viktor Pelevin in the Context of Post-Soviet Litera-

ture.” In Russian Postmodernism: New Perspectives on

Post-Soviet Culture, eds. Mikhail Epstein, Alexander

Genis, and Slobodanka Vladiv-Glover. New York:

Berghan.

LIOT

ORENSTEIN

PEOPLE’S COMMISSARIAT

OF NATIONALITIES

While the tsarist empire had no specific ministry

to deal with the non-Russian peoples, upon com-

ing to power the Bolsheviks established a People’s

Commissariat of Nationalities, with Josef Stalin at

its head, in its first government. Soviet policy to-

ward the nationalities was based on both ideology

and pragmatism. Both Vladimir Lenin and Stalin

upheld the Marxist (and liberal) principle of the

right of nationalities to self-determination, even in

the face of opposition from many of their com-

rades. Lenin and Stalin believed that nationalism

arose from non-Russians’ distrust (nedoverie) of an

oppressive nationality, such as the Russians. Secure

in their faith that “national differences and antag-

onisms between peoples are vanishing gradually

from day to day” and that “the supremacy of the

proletariat will cause them to vanish still faster,”

the Bolshevik leaders were prepared to grant au-

tonomy, cultural and language rights, and even

territory to non-Russian peoples in order to stave

off separatism and chauvinist nationalism. Even as

national Communist leaders in Ukraine, Transcau-

casia, and elsewhere took over the development of

their national populations, the Commissariat of

Nationalities (abbreviated as Narkomnats) man-

aged the affairs of dozens of peoples in the Russ-

ian Soviet Socialist Federation and beyond.

Immediately after taking power, the Bolsheviks

issued a series of declarations on “the rights of the

toiling and exploited peoples,” “to all Muslim toil-

ers of Russia and the East,” and on the disposition

of Turkish Armenia. Most importantly, with little

real ability to effect its will in the peripheries, the

Soviet government made a strategic shift in re-

sponse to the growing number of autonomies and

accepted by January 1918 the principle of federal-

ism. In each national area the government pro-

moted programs to favor the local indigenous

peoples, a kind of cultural affirmative action. Not

only were native languages supported, but indige-

nous leaders, if they were loyal to the Communist

enterprise, were also supported. Within the Com-

missariat there were separate sub-commissariats

for Jewish, Armenian, and other nationalities’

affairs—even a Polar Subcommittee for the “small

peoples of the north.” The newspaper Zhizn’ nat-

sional’nostei was the official house organ of the

Commissariat.

As commissar, Stalin was often absent from

the affairs of his Commissariat. Yet on important

PEOPLE’S COMMISSARIAT OF NATIONALITIES

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

occasions he settled decisive issues, as in 1921 when

he supported the inclusion of the Armenian region

of Mountainous Karabakh in the neighboring state

of Azerbaijan. Stalin favored the formation of a

Transcaucasian Federation of Armenia, Azerbaijan,

and Georgia, against the desires of many local Bol-

sheviks, particularly among the Georgians. On this

issue, and the even more important question of

how centralized the new Union of Soviet Socialist

Republics would be, Stalin came into conflict with

Lenin, who was far more suspicious of the “Great

Power chauvinism” of the Russians and favored

more rights for the non-Russians. Both men, how-

ever, supported the general line known as kor-

enizatsya, which sought to indigenize the areas

in which non-Russian peoples lived by developing

local cultures, political elites, and national lan-

guages.

Activists from Narkomnats were involved in

setting up autonomous regions for non-Russian

peoples, establishing newspapers, publishing pam-

phlets, and fostering literacy. Many of them saw

themselves as protectors of the weak, a bulwark

against the potential destruction of native cultures.

But at the same time the government’s policies be-

trayed a kind of paternalism directed toward

“backward” or “primitive” peoples who were, in

many cases, not considered able to run their own

affairs. Officials in Moscow acknowledged at times

that they knew little about the peoples in more re-

mote reaches of their vast country. Much linguis-

tic and ethnographic work had still to be done to

evaluate just which group belonged to which na-

tionality, and Narkomnats assisted in developing

Soviet anthropology and ethnography. In a real

sense government intervention and the work of in-

tellectuals helped draw the lines of distinction that

later took a reality of their own between various

peoples.

With the formation of the Soviet Union in

early 1924, the Commissariat of Nationalities was

dissolved, and its activities shifted to the new

Soviet parliament. But by that time the broad and

lasting contours of Soviet nationality policy had

been worked out. Only during the 1930s, with the

growing autocratic power of Stalin, the radical

social transformations of his “revolution from

above,” and the fear of approaching war in Eu-

rope was the policy of korenizatsya moderated

in favor of a more Russophilic and nationalist

policy.

See also: KORENIZATSYA; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, SOVIET

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Blank, Stephen. (1994). The Sorcerer as Apprentice: Stalin

as Commissar of Nationalities, 1917–1924. Westport,

CT: Greenwood Press.

Martin, Terry. (2001). The Affirmative Action Empire: Na-

tions and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939.

Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press.

Slezkine, Yuri. (1994). Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small

Peoples of the North. Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell

University Press.

Smith, Jeremy. (1999). The Bolsheviks and the National

Question, 1917–23. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Suny, Ronald Grigor. (1993). The Revenge of the Past: Na-

tionalism, Revolution, and the Collapse of the Soviet

Union. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

ONALD

RIGOR

UNY

PEOPLE’S CONTROL COMMITTEE

The Soviet leadership used several organizations to

ensure popular compliance with its policies, ideol-

ogy, and morality. During the 1920s and 1930s,

the Central Party Control Committee ensured Party

discipline by verifying the thoughts and actions of

Party members and candidates. Simultaneously,

Rabkrin (the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate)

used workers and peasants to supervise local ad-

ministrators.

Josef Stalin gradually subordinated the Central

Control Commission to the Party’s Central Com-

mittee and ultimately himself. In 1923 he merged

it with the Workers and Peasant’s Inspectorate.

From the beginning, the Central Control Commis-

sion was given a broad and vague mandate, al-

lowing excesses and abuse of power. Not only did

it investigate cases of poor work performance, fail-

ure to meet production quotas, corruption, or even

drunkenness, but it found violations as needed

when Stalin’s purges began during the 1930s.

As part of his de-Stalinization campaign fol-

lowing Stalin’s death in 1953, Nikita Khrushchev

announced he was going back to the party’s Lenin-

ist roots. While maintaining a tamer Party disci-

plinary structure, Khrushchev also recreated the

Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate, now known

as the Party-State Control Committee (PSCC). Us-

ing thousands of volunteers to supplement its small

permanent staff, the PSCC was designed as more

of a grassroots organization working to ensure ful-

fillment of the five-year plans. Instead of top-down

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surveillance, Khrushchev saw the Committees as a

way of channeling factory-level information to top

planners, such as hidden stockpiles of goods or re-

sources.

Following Khrushchev’s ouster in 1964, the

committee was renamed in December 1965, be-

coming the People’s Control Committee. It contin-

ued to rely on volunteers—about ten million in

1980—to monitor government and economic ac-

tivities. In addition, the Committee’s chair, Alexan-

der Shelepin, was removed, as Party leaders feared

he held too many powerful posts at once. He was

succeeded by Pavel Kovanov, who was replaced by

Gennadiy Ivanovich Voronov in 1971. Voronov

was replaced in 1974 by Alexei Shkolnikov.

Following his election as general secretary in

1985, Mikhail Gorbachev began to restructure the

PCC in accordance with his overall reform pro-

gram. He appointed Sergei Manykin to chair the

PCC in March 1987. Among the changes ordered

was to reduce the number of inspections, because

they were disruptive and actually contributed to

inefficiency. In 1989 the organization was recon-

figured as the USSR People’s Control Committee

under the newly constituted USSR Supreme Soviet.

Professional staff replaced the volunteers. In June

1989, Manyakin was replaced by Gennady Kolbin,

who launched an ambitious program to link in-

spection reports to proposed legislation in the

Supreme Soviet. Kolbin also sought to ensure that

punishments were actually implemented, not over-

turned by appeals to a party patron.

See also: COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION; DE-

STALINIZATION; PERESTROIKA; PURGES, THE GREAT;

RABKRIN.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adams, Jan S. (1978). “Institutional Change in the

1970s: The Case of the USSR People’s Control Com-

mittee.” Slavic Review 37(3):457–472.

Adams, Jan S. (1989). “USSR People’s Control Commit-

tee and Perestroika.” Radio Liberty Report on the USSR

1(4):1–3.

E. R

OBERTSON

PEOPLE’S HOUSES

(Narodnye doma), cultural-educational centers for

the working classes that usually contained a read-

ing room, lecture hall, tea room, and theater.

The movement to construct people’s houses or

people’s palaces with cultural and educational fa-

cilities for the working classes began in Britain dur-

ing the second half of the nineteenth century and

soon spread to Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands,

France, Austria, and other countries.

In Russia the first people’s houses were built

by the semiofficial Guardianships of Popular Tem-

perance, which operated under the auspices of the

Finance Ministry. During the 1890s the Russian Fi-

nance Ministry began introducing a state liquor

monopoly to regulate liquor sales and increase state

revenues. The Ministry set up local Guardianships

of Popular Temperance to monitor adherence to

the liquor laws. The Guardianships were also in-

structed to encourage moderate drinking habits

among the population by disseminating informa-

tion on the dangers of excessive drinking, provid-

ing facilities for the treatment of alcoholism, and

organizing “rational recreations” as an alternative

to the tavern.

By the early 1900s the Guardianships of Pop-

ular Temperance were running people’s houses in

St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev, and other cities. St.

Petersburg’s imposing Emperor Nicholas II People’s

House was the largest recreational facility in the

Russian Empire. It contained a dining hall, tea room,

lending library, reading rooms, an observatory, a

clinic for the treatment of alcoholics, a museum

devoted to alcoholism, a cinema, a 1,500-seat the-

ater, and an opera house. Besides performances of

drama and opera, the Nicholas II People’s House or-

ganized scientific and religious lectures, evening

adult classes, gymnastic exercises, classes in choral

singing and folk music, and activities for children.

From 1900 to 1913 almost two million people an-

nually attended the entertainments at the Nicholas

II People’s House, which was famed for its spec-

tacular productions of historical plays and fantasy

extravaganzas. Leading actors and artists some-

times appeared on the stage of the Nicholas II Peo-

ple’s House, where Fyodor Shalyapin, Russia’s

greatest opera singer, gave a free concert for work-

ers in 1915.

Zemstvos, dumas, and literacy societies also

constructed people’s houses throughout Russia.

The Kharkov Literacy Society built a people’s house

in 1903; the Moscow duma opened a municipal

people’s house with a theater in 1904. The liberal

philanthropist Countess Sofia Panina opened her

Ligovsky People’s House in 1903 in a poor district

of St. Petersburg; there workers could attend even-

ing courses, and Pavel Gaideburov and Nadezhda

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

Skarskaya ran a very successful theater. By 1913

there were at least 222 people’s houses in the Russ-

ian Empire. During World War I, when prohibition

against alcohol was enacted, interest in people’s

houses increased, but the Petrograd and Moscow

dumas’ ambitious plans for extensive networks of

people’s houses were never realized due to the fi-

nancial strains of the war.

The Russian people’s houses primary aim was

to promote sobriety among the lower classes by

offering them “rational recreations” in the form of

theater performances, lectures, reading rooms, ex-

cursions, and other sober pursuits. Although their

impact on popular alcohol consumption is doubt-

ful, the people’s houses did offer the common peo-

ple modest educational opportunities and a diverse

variety of affordable theatrical entertainments. Af-

ter the October Revolution the people’s houses were

reorganized under the Soviet regime as “palaces of

culture” and workers’ clubs but continued many

of the same activities as before.