Encyclopedia of Russian History

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RAZNOCHINTSY

Raznochintsy were people of various ranks, a ju-

dicial category of population consisting of educated

individuals from classes and estates in Russia in the

eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This included

members of the clergy, merchants, petty towns-

people, peasantry, minor officials, and impover-

ished nobility who had received an education and

left their former estates.

From the 1840s the raznochintsy had a signif-

icant influence on the development of Russian so-

ciety and culture, and became the main social

stratum for the formation of the Russian intelli-

gentsia in the 1860s.

The development of capitalism in Russia after

the abolition of serfdom in 1861 demanded more

educated people. After the opening of university ed-

ucation for the middle class, the number of edu-

cated people in the Russian empire rapidly increased.

Thus increased the number of raznochintsy.

Raznochintsy worshiped education and had a cult

of science, believing that the main principles of life

should be materialism, utilitarianism, and scien-

tism. They thought that art should serve utilitar-

ian purposes. The hero of the novel Fathers and Sons

(1862), by Ivan Turgenev, Evgeny Bazarov was a

typical raznochinets and nihilist. He believed only

in the value of science and denied the worth of art

and poetry.

Among the raznochintsy at that time was wide

spread nihilism (from the Latin nihil meaning noth-

ing). They denied the traditional values of the so-

ciety, such as marriage and private property, and

derided sentimentalism. They created their own

morality and style of life. They called themselves

“developed individuals,” “thinking realists,” “new

people” and “critically thinking individuals.” The

women nihilists had short haircuts and smoked

cigarettes. They often live in communes and par-

ticipated in various groups and societies, where

they discussed political and social problems.

Raznochintsy usually chose independent liberal

professions such as writers, journalists, teachers,

scientists, and scholars rather than toiling in gov-

ernment service.

The Russian writers and literary critics Vissar-

ion Belinsky, Nikolai Chernyshevsky and Nickolai

Dobrolubov were raznochintsy. The “Letter to

Gogol” by Belinsky became the “. . . testament and

gospel” of (the Russian) radicals.

Intolerance and unwillingness to accept com-

promise was very typical for nihilists, the genera-

tion of raznochintsy of the 1850s and 1860s.

Denying traditional values of the hypocritical so-

ciety, they were very intolerant of the contrary

opinions and created their own system of restric-

tions and limitations. Some historians explain the

radicalism of raznochintsy by their social origins:

many of them were the sons of provincial priests

and former seminarians, and they were idealists

and dreamt about creation of an ideal and fair state.

Due to their radicalism, raznochintsy played a cen-

tral role at the crucial moment in the formation of

the revolutionary intelligentsia. By the 1870s ni-

hilism as a social phenomenon almost disappeared

and gradually raznochintsy transformed into part

of the Russian intelligentsia.

See also: INTELLIGENTSIA; NIHILISM AND NIHILISTS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Becker, Christopher. (1959). “Raznochintsy: The Devel-

opment of the Word and the Concept,” American

Slavic and E. European Review, 18: 63–74.

Pomper, Philip. (1970). The Russian Revolutionary Intelli-

gentsia. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company,

Inc.

Wirtschafter, Elise K. (1994). Structures of Society: Impe-

rial Russia’s “Peoples of Various Ranks.” DeKalb:

Northern University Press.

ICTORIA

HITERER

REDEMPTION PAYMENTS

One of Alexander II’s reforms was the emancipa-

tion of twenty million serfs in 1861. The Russian

government paid former serf-holders for land that

was then issued in allotments to the newly freed

serfs. The peasants, however, were obligated to pay

the government back for this land (plus interest)

through what were called redemption payments.

Each peasant household generally got less land (and

less desirable land) in the emancipation settlement

than it had tilled before emancipation, and the re-

demption payments were often in excess of the

rental cost of the allotment.

The traditional peasant commune (mir or ob-

shchina) was given the responsibility of assuring

that its members would pay their redemption debt.

The communes accomplished this by limiting the

REDEMPTION PAYMENTS

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

rights of peasants to leave the commune prior to

paying off their debt, and by redistributing land be-

tween households in the commune. This method

of periodic redistribution ensured that each house-

hold had the resources to make its redemption pay-

ments, but continued a pattern of a peasants

holding many small strips of land rather than one

contiguous field. It further required that all peas-

ants retain the primitive three-field system of crop

rotation, and discouraged individual peasants from

improving their holdings.

Peasants never accepted the redemption debt as

legitimate, and many communes accumulated

large arrears, which periodically were written off

and then accumulated again. By 1905 the govern-

ment realized that the payments were more of an

irritation to the peasantry than they were worth

as a source of income, and on November 3 of that

year an imperial decree abolished them, partly as a

vain attempt to forestall growing peasant unrest

that led to the 1905 revolution.

See also: ENSERFMENT; EMANCIPATION ACT; GREAT RE-

FORMS; MIR; OBSHCHINA; PEASANTRY; SERFDOM

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Lincoln, W. Bruce. (1990). The Great Reforms. DeKalb:

Northern Illinois University Press.

Robinson, Geroid T. (1967). Rural Russia under the Old

Regime. Berkeley: University of California Press.

A. D

ELANO

ARM

RED GUARDS

Red Guards (also called Workers’ Militia) were vol-

unteer armed bands formed by industrial workers

in the cities during the Russian Revolution of 1917.

They played an important role in the turmoil of

1917, in the Bolshevik seizure of power, and in se-

curing the new Soviet government. The term Red

Guard originated in Finland during the Revolution

of 1905 and reemerged in 1917, especially after

April, to signify the more politically militant armed

workers.

Volunteer armed workers’ bands were formed

during and after the February Revolution by in-

dustrial workers at factories to protect and advance

the interests of the industrial workers during the

revolution, to maintain public safety, and to guard

against counterrevolution. They were loosely or-

ganized (mostly self-organized), chose their own

leaders, and were independent of all political par-

ties and the new Provisional Government. They at-

tracted the more militant members of the working

class and gravitated politically toward the radical

end of the spectrum (thus the tendency in later

writing to associate them with the Bolsheviks, even

though Socialist Revolutionaries [SRs], anarchists,

and even Mensheviks participated, along with non-

party elements). Indeed, they were a symbol of the

most emphatic worker self-organization and self-

assertion. Their organizational base was the factory,

and their loyalty was to it and to the factory com-

mittees and the soviets of workers’ and soldiers’

deputies, in Petrograd (the capital) and other cities.

The government and more moderate socialists were

suspicious of them but unable to suppress them.

The Red Guard grew in size and militancy dur-

ing the summer and early fall as political tensions

increased, the economic situation worsened, and

workers sensed that the gains they had made after

February were slipping away. Industrial workers

increasingly saw the Red Guards as essential to pro-

tecting their economic and political interests. By the

October Revolution, Red Guard detachments totaled

about 150,000 to 175,000 men across the coun-

try, about 25,000 to 30,000 of them in Petrograd.

The Red Guards and the Bolsheviks found common

ground in the slogan “All Power to the Soviets” and

the call for radical social reforms and an end to the

war. As a result, a close working relationship de-

veloped between them.

The Red Guards played an important role in the

October Revolution and the first few months of

the new Bolshevik regime. In Petrograd they joined

with soldiers to secure the overthrow of the Provi-

sional Government and the proclamation of “Soviet

power”—the new Bolshevik government. Red Guard

bands played a similar role in the transfer of power

in Moscow and provincial cities. They fought the

initial armed efforts to overthrow the Bolsheviks and

provided the new government with much-needed

armed coercion. The Red Guards were an important

part of expeditionary forces sent from Petrograd and

Moscow in late 1917 and early 1918 to secure con-

trol over outlying regions. Some Red Guard detach-

ments were incorporated into the new Red Army in

1918, others withered away, and the Soviet gov-

ernment formally abolished the Red Guard in April

1918. The essential features of the Red Guard and

workers’ militias—self-organization, local orienta-

tion, and elected leaders—were not suited to the de-

mands of civil war or the new Communist era.

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

See also: BOLSHEVISM; FEBRUARY REVOLUTION; OCTOBER

REVOLUTION; WORKERS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Wade, Rex A. (1984). Red Guards and Workers’ Militias

in the Russian Revolution. Stanford, CA: Stanford

University Press.

A. W

ADE

RED SQUARE

Red Square, like the Moscow Kremlin on which it

borders, is one of the best known locales of mod-

ern world culture. Associated with military parades,

aggressive rhetoric, and the Lenin mausoleum, Red

Square came to symbolize Soviet power from 1918

until the demise of the Soviet Union. The term “red”

in fact derives not from political sources but from

a former meaning of the Russian word krasnaia:

“beautiful.”

From the earliest days of Moscow’s existence

in the twelfth century, some form of trading area

probably existed to the east of the fortified center

(kremlin) of the settlement. By the second half of

the fourteenth century, evidence suggests that

there was a more clearly defined area devoted to

trade and located near the main, east towers of the

Kremlin, whose log walls were at that time being

rebuilt in limestone by Prince Dmitry Ivanovich.

This space was enlarged for defensive purposes by

the decree of Ivan III after the great fire of 1493,

which destroyed many ramshackle trading booths.

The sixteenth century witnessed dramatic

changes in the form and meaning of Red Square.

Between 1508 and 1516, Basil III ordered that a

large moat be dug along the east wall of the Krem-

lin, which had been rebuilt of strong brick under

the supervision of Italian engineers. The highest

sections of the wall faced Red Square, which had

no natural defensive barrier, whereas the Moscow

and Neglinnaia Rivers flowed along the other two

sides of the Kremlin triangle. Between 1535 and

1538, the construction of brick walls around the

larger trading district of Kitai gorod (Chinatown,

lying to the east of the Kremlin) gave Red Square

its own defensive system, and the moat was soon

drained. Within a few years of the conquest of

Kazan by Ivan IV in 1552, work began on the most

renowned of Moscow’s architectural monuments,

the Cathedral of the Intercession on the Moat, pop-

ularly called Saint Basil’s (1555–1561). With the

consecration of this complex structure, Red Square

gained a focal point that has remained to this day.

The first ruler to attempt to bring order into

the chaotic trading zone of Red Square was Boris

Godunov, who in 1595 ordered the construction of

brick trading rows on the east side of the square.

These rows, designated Upper, Middle, and Lower,

faced the east wall of the Kremlin and descended al-

most to the bank of the Moscow River. Tsar Boris

also commanded the rebuilding of Lobnoe mesto,

the site from which state proclamations were read.

First mentioned in 1547, this wooden platform was

rebuilt as a circular limestone form with a low

parapet. From the sixteenth through the eighteenth

centuries, the area near Lobnoe mesto became no-

torious as a place of state executions.

The deliverance of Moscow from the Time of

Troubles (1598–1613, an interregnum that in-

cluded the occupation of the city by Polish forces)

in the early seventeenth century was commemo-

rated by the construction of the Church of the

Kazan Mother of God (consecrated in 1636, razed

in 1936, rebuilt in 1990–1993). In the same period,

Red Square was repaved with flat logs, and during

the reign of Alexei Mikhailovich, its north bound-

ary was given a more imposing form with the con-

struction of the brick Resurrection Gate (1680;

razed in 1931 and rebuilt between 1994 and 1996).

By the latter part of the eighteenth century, Cather-

ine the Great embarked on another campaign to rid

the square of wooden structures. As part of this

process, the trading rows were expanded and Lob-

noe mesto was shifted eastward to its present po-

sition.

In 1804 the square was repaved with cobble-

stones, but not until the rebuilding of Moscow af-

ter the 1812 fire was the dry moat filled and planted

with trees. With the surge in Moscow’s economic

and cultural significance in the latter half of the

nineteenth century, Red Square underwent a fun-

damental change that included the building of the

Historical Museum (1874–1883) and the expansion

of the Upper and Middle Trading Rows (1888–1893

and 1889–1891, respectively).

After the shift of the Soviet capital to Moscow

in 1918, Red Square became the site of the coun-

try’s major demonstrations and its cobblestones

were replaced with flat, granite paving blocks. The

Lenin Mausoleum, first built of wood (1924) and

then in its current form (1930), became the most

visible symbol of the regime. On November 7,

RED SQUARE

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

1941, ranks of soldiers marched past the mau-

soleum tribune directly to the front during the de-

ciding phase of the Battle of Moscow. During the

postwar period the world’s attention continued to

be riveted by the Red Square parades, but perhaps

the most startling event occurred on May 28, 1987,

when Mathias Rust, a teen-aged German pilot,

landed a small plane in the center of Red Square.

The repercussions of this act, which Rust pro-

claimed a gesture of peace, extended not only to the

Defense Ministry but to the entire Soviet govern-

ing apparatus.

In the post-Soviet area, Red Square continued

to be a place of public demonstrations and tours.

Although debates have continued about the role of

certain features, such as the Lenin Mausoleum, Red

Square seems to be one of the few areas of Moscow

that will retain its present form into the twenty-

first century.

See also: ARCHITECTURE; CATHEDRAL OF ST. BASIL; KREM-

LIN; MOSCOW

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brumfield, William Craft. (1993). A History of Russian

Architecture. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Murrell, Kathleen Berton. (1990). Moscow: An Architec-

tural History. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

ILLIAM

RAFT

RUMFIELD

RED TERROR

Initiated in 1918, Red Terror was a state policy of

the Bolshevik government to suppress, intimidate,

or liquidate real or potential adversaries of the

regime. It started on September 5, when the survival

of the Bolshevik regime was threatened by foreign

and domestic foes. Individual guilt did not matter;

belonging to a suspect social class did. It was, in

other words, a class-based approach not to justice

but to settling accounts with potential enemies. Its

first victims were former tsarist officers, policemen,

aristocracy, opposition parties’ leaders, and property

owners who had enjoyed privileges under the old

regime. In 1918 about fifteen thousand were exe-

cuted. In 1919, other social groups were targeted:

former landlords, entrepreneurs, and Cossacks, at-

tacked for their suspected anti-Bolshevik attitudes.

In 1920 the policy was extended to peasants in re-

bellious provinces, along with thousands of cap-

tured White Russian officers and their families.

White Russians were the counterrevolutionaries;

the color white was a symbol of the old order and

the color red was a symbol of revolution and com-

munism.

Red Terror was carried out by a new institu-

tion, called the Cheka (an abbreviation of the Russ-

ian for “extraordinary commission”). The Cheka

was a state institution, subordinate only to the

Communist Party Central Committee. It was a po-

litical police force that did not enforce the law but

instead administered systematic terror arbitrarily.

Local Chekas, especially in the Ukraine, were no-

torious for their cruelty, and for mass executions

carried out in the summer of 1919. It was a party

instrument for the conduct of legalized lawlessness.

Settling of accounts and personal gain were often

motives for denunciation. New concepts entered the

lexicon, among them “enemies of the people,” “hid-

den enemies,” and “suspect social origin.” The long

term consequence of Red Terror was a disregard

for individual guilt or innocence, the institutional-

ization of a class-based approach to justice, the

designation of “suspect social groups,” fear and in-

timidation of entire population and, subsequently,

an even greater wave of state-sponsored terror un-

der Josef Vissarionovich Stalin.

See also: BOLSHEVISM; DZERZHINSKY, FELIX EDMUNDO-

VICH; STATE SECURITY, ORGANS OF; TERRORISM

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brovkin, Vladimir. (1994). Behind the Front Lines of the

Civil War: Political Parties and Social Movements in

Russia. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Courtois, Stéphane et al. (1999). The Black Book of Com-

munism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, tr. Jonathan Mur-

phy and Mark Kramer, consulting ed., Mark Kramer.

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Figes, Orlando. (1989). Peasant Russia, Civil War: The

Volga Countryside in Revolution. London: Oxford Uni-

versity Press.

Leggett, George. (1981). The Cheka: Lenin’s Political Po-

lice. New York: Oxford University Press.

Maximoff, G.P. (1979). The Guillotine at Work: The Lenin-

ist Counterrevolution. Orkney, UK: Cienfigos Press.

Melgunov, Sergey. (1974). The Red Terror in Russia. West-

port, CT: Hyperion.

Pipes, Richard. (1995). Russia under the Bolshevik Regime.

New York: Vintage Books.

RED TERROR

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

Swain, Geoffrey. (1996). The Origins of the Russian Civil

War. London: Longman.

LADIMIR

ROVKIN

REFERENDUM OF APRIL 1993

The Referendum of April 1993 was the first and

second-to-last referendum in new Russia, if one

counts the national vote on the constitution in De-

cember 1993. It was held as a result of opposition

between President Boris Yeltsin and the Congress of

People’s Deputies. Yeltsin, who was highly popu-

lar at the time, relied on direct mandate, which he

received two years earlier in the elections, and the

Congress made active efforts at limiting his power,

changing the constitution in its favor. Not one of

the referendum questions provided for direct ac-

tion; thus they were only significant as cards in a

political game.

There were four referendum questions:

1. Do you have confidence in Boris Yeltsin, pres-

ident of the Russian Federation? (“yes”: 58.7%;

“no”: 39.3%);

2. Do you approve of the socioeconomic political

policy conducted by the president of the RF

(Russian Federation) and by the RF government

since 1992? (“yes”: 53%; “no”: 44.5%);

3. Do you consider it necessary to hold early elec-

tions for the president of the RF? (“yes”: 49.5%,

or 31.7% of all voters, “no”: 47%, or 30.1% of

voters);

4. Do you consider it necessary to hold early elec-

tions for RF delegates? (“yes”: 67.2%, or 43%

of voters; “no”: 30.1%, or 19.3% of voters).

With 64 percent participation, all questions but

the third (concerning early presidential elections)

had a majority of “yes” votes; however, less than

half the voters responded to the questions con-

cerning early presidential and RF delegate elections.

The last point is significant in that, according to a

decision of the Constitutional Court, the third and

fourth questions, affecting the Constitution, re-

quired a constitutional majority. For this reason

the referendum had a purely psychological impact,

though a great one at that. It showed that with in-

creasing conflict, neither the executive nor the rep-

resentative branches of power enjoyed the support

of the absolute majority of the population. Despite

all the burdens of economic reform, the president

and the government he formed still had a signifi-

cant store of popular confidence. Taking into ac-

count Chechnya, where the referendum did not

take place, and Tatarstan, where participation was

little over 20 percent, voters in 28 out of 89 re-

gions, including 14 national formations, did not

express confidence in the president.

Appealing to popular support that he received

in the referendum, Yeltsin first accelerated the

process of revising of the new, “presidential” con-

stitution, and in the fall he resolved the conflict

with the representative branch by means of force.

The congress was dismissed, and a vote was sched-

uled for the new constitution, as well as elections

to parliament on the basis of this new constitution.

See also: CONGRESS OF PEOPLE’S DEPUTIES; CONSTITUTION

OF 1993; OCTOBER 1993 EVENTS; YELTSIN, BORIS NIKO-

LAYEVICH

BIBLIOGRAPHY

McFaul, Michael. (2001). Russia’s Unfinished Revolution:

Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin. Ithaca, NY:

Cornell University Press.

McFaul, Michael, and Markov, Sergei. (1993). The Trou-

bled Birth of Russian Democracy: Parties, Personalities,

and Programs. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution

Press.

Reddaway, Peter, and Glinski, Dmitri. (2001). The Tragedy

of Russia’s Reforms: Market Bolshevism against Democ-

racy. Washington, DC: U.S. Institute of Peace Press.

White, Stephen; Rose, Richard; and McAllister, Ian. (1997).

How Russia Votes. Chatham, NJ: Chatham House.

IKOLAI

ETROV

REFERENDUM OF DECEMBER 1993

A referendum of December 12, 1993, ratified a new

constitution for the Russian Federation, which had

long been sought by President Boris Yeltsin. The

collapse of the USSR in late 1991 made the ratifi-

cation of a new constitution most urgent. As the

USSR no longer existed as a legal entity, its laws

technically no longer had legal force. To fill this

void, President Yeltsin and the parliament con-

curred that the constitution and laws of the for-

mer RSFSR would continue to be observed until a

new constitution could be adopted. This was a nec-

essary but unsatisfactory situation, since the 1978

Constitution of the Russian Federation was the

product of the Brezhnev era and reflected the val-

ues of the now repudiated communist system.

REFERENDUM OF DECEMBER 1993

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

Throughout the period from 1991 to 1993,

Yeltsin quarreled with the parliament over the out-

lines of a new constitution. In particular, progress

toward approving a new constitution was delayed

by heated disputes over three major issues: the al-

location of powers between the executive branch

and the legislative branch, the allocation of powers

between central and subnational institutions, and

the process for ratifying a new constitution. The

deadlock was finally broken on September 21,

1993, when Yeltsin issued a decree dissolving the

parliament. Anti-Yeltsin members of parliament re-

fused to disband but were evicted by force on Oc-

tober 4, as Yeltsin ordered troops to fire on the

Russian White House.

The violent events of October 1993 cleared the

way for new elections to be held on December 12,

in which voters were asked to approve a draft con-

stitution favorable to the president and also to elect

a new lower house of parliament (Duma), called

for in the draft.

President Yeltsin issued a degree on October 15

calling for a plebiscite on his draft constitution. The

document was made public on November 9, leaving

only one month for debate and discussion. Yeltsin’s

choice of terminology “plebiscite” rather than “ref-

erendum” was not accidental. According to the 1990

Law on Referenda, issues affecting the constitution

required the support of a majority of all registered

voters, rather than a majority of all those voting.

Voter turnout for the December 12 referendum

was low compared to previous elections. Only 54.8

percent of eligible voters turned out, and of those,

only 58.4 percent supported the new constitution.

Had ratification of the new constitution depended

on the referendum, it would have lost, since only

about 31 percent of all eligible voters supported the

new constitution. However, Yeltsin declared a vic-

tory for the new constitution in the plebiscite, and

the document became generally regarded as the le-

gitimate Constitution of the Russian Federation.

See also: CONSTITUTION OF 1993; OCTOBER 1993 EVENTS;

YELTSIN, BORIS NIKOLAYEVICH

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Marsh, Christopher. (2002). Russia at the Polls: Voters,

Elections and Democratization. Washington, DC: CQ

Press.

White, Stephen; Rose, Richard; and McAllister, Ian. (1997).

How Russia Votes. Chatham, NJ: Chathan House.

ORDON

B. S

MITH

REFERENDUM OF MARCH 1991

On March 17, 1991, a referendum was held in the

Soviet Union in which voters were asked the fol-

lowing question: “Do you consider necessary the

preservation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Re-

publics as a renewed federation of equal sovereign

republics, in which the rights and freedoms of an

individual of any nationality will be fully guaran-

teed?” The referendum was sponsored by the So-

viet president, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who hoped it

would make clear that despite rising separatist sen-

timents in many parts of the USSR, a majority of

Soviet citizens wanted the country to remain uni-

fied. The six union republics where separatist aspi-

rations were strongest—Armenia, Estonia, Georgia,

Latvia, Lithuania, Moldavia (Moldova)—boycotted

the referendum. However, their populations made

up only approximately 7 percent of the total USSR

population. Overall turnout was 80.0 percent, and

76.4 percent of those participating voted “yes.” In

Russia, turnout was 75.4 percent, with 71.3 per-

cent voting “yes,” while in Ukraine turnout was

83.5 percent, with 70.2 percent voting “yes” (the

lowest percentage among all union republics). In

all six republics with traditionally Muslim majori-

ties, well over 90 percent voted “yes.”

The results were initially interpreted as a vic-

tory for Gorbachev and other defenders of the

union. However, the significance of the referendum

was undermined by the ambiguity of the question.

It was unclear, for example, what was meant by

“a renewed federation of equal sovereign republics.”

In addition, some of the participating republics

added supplemental questions to the ballot. In Rus-

sia, for example, voters were asked to endorse

the establishment of a directly elected Russian So-

viet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR) president,

which was understood as an opportunity to sup-

port the leader of the Russian government and Gor-

bachev’s principal rival at the time, Boris Yeltsin.

In Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, voters

were asked whether they supported their republic’s

sovereignty as part of a new union, while in Kaza-

khstan the wording of the referendum was changed

by substituting “equal sovereign states” for “equal

sovereign republics.” In each case, the electorate ap-

proved the supplemental questions. Thus the ref-

erendum failed to resolve the Soviet Union’s crisis

of territorial integrity. Nine months later, the USSR

passed into history as a legal entity. Nevertheless,

in the long term the referendum left a legacy of

post-independence resentment in those areas where

REFERENDUM OF MARCH 1991

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

the electorate had voted in favor of a preserved

union; many people felt that the USSR’s dissolu-

tion had been opposed by the great majority of So-

viet voters.

See also: GORBACHEV, MIKHAIL SERGEYEVICH; NATION-

ALITIES POLICIES, SOVIET; YELTSIN, BORIS NIKO-

LAYEVICH

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brady, Henry E., and Kaplan, Cynthia S. (1994). “East-

ern Europe and the Former Soviet Union.” In Refer-

endums around the World: The Growing Use of Direct

Democracy, ed. David Butler and Austin Ranney.

Washington, DC: AEI Press.

Walker, Edward W. (2003). Dissolution: Sovereignty and

the Breakup of the USSR. Boulder, CO: Rowman & Lit-

tlefield.

DWARD

W. W

ALKER

REFUSENIKS

Beginning in the mid-1960s, a movement began

among Soviet Jews seeking permission to emigrate

to Israel. Despite an agreement to allow emigra-

tions, Soviet authorities subjected most of those

who sought to leave to a campaign of intimida-

tion: Soviet citizenship might be revoked; many

were fired from their jobs; they were harrassed,

their phones were bugged, and they faced hostile

interrogations. The most vocal activists, such as

Anatoly (later Natan) Sharansky and Vladimir

Slepak, were arrested on charges of treason and es-

pionage and sent to psychiatric hospitals or labor

camps. Although eventually, in the 1970s and

again in the Gorbachev era, tens of thousands of

Jews were allowed to leave, many were denied exit

visas for months, years, and even decades on

grounds of national security or political animos-

ity. These unfortunates became known as “re-

fuseniks,” and their plight, both in itself and as

shorthand for the plight of Soviet Jewry in general

was a cause célèbre in the West and a sticking point

in U.S.-Soviet relations.

Jews had always faced pervasive discrimina-

tion in the USSR, but several factors coincided in

the 1960s to crystallize Jewish national con-

sciousness and stimulate a drive to emigrate. Some

were the same factors that spurred the dissident

movement. The Khrushchev-era Thaw produced

new interest in Jewish culture. The trial of Andrei

Sinyavsky and Yuly Daniel in 1966 signaled a

crackdown on the intelligentsia, a disproportionate

number of whom were Jews. The 1968 invasion

of Czechoslovakia convinced many that their hopes

for reform were pipe dreams.

Other factors were specific to the Jewish ques-

tion. Jewish groups in the West began to organize

around the issue of Soviet antisemitism and to

make contact with Soviet Jews. Most importantly,

Israel’s stunning victory in the Six-Day War (1967)

stirred the imagination of Soviet Jews and made

them listen more attentively to Israel’s call, while

the vicious and scurrilous anti-Zionist campaign

that followed made Jews feel that there was no

place for them in the USSR.

Large-scale Jewish emigration began in earnest

in 1971. Nearly 13,000 left that year, followed by

32,000 in 1972. Most of the early immigrants

went to Israel. The flow of émigrés ebbed in the

mid-1970s, then soared to a high of 50,000 in

1979, with more than half going to the United

States before slowing to a trickle following the U.S.

boycott of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow under

the repressive hands of Yuri Andropov and Kon-

stantin Chernenko. Why did the Soviet government

allow Jews to emigrate at all? One theory cites ex-

ternal factors, including intense pressure from Jew-

ish and human-rights organizations in the West,

Soviet attempts to win concessions in the era of dé-

tente, and legal measures such as the Jackson-

Vanik Amendment in the United States, which tied

most-favored-nation trading status to a country’s

emigration policies. Another theory gives primary

credit to internal factors: the pressure of Jewish na-

tionalism itself, a desire to rid the country of trou-

blemakers, the hope of using emigration to plant

spies in capitalist countries. Both theories presume

that Soviet emigration policy was coherent and fol-

lowed a set of clear goals articulated at the top.

Archival documents reveal the contrary; the cen-

tral authorities had little expertise on the issue and

reacted on the spur of the moment to biased re-

ports from self-interested bureaucracies.

In 1987, after initial hesitation, Mikhail Gor-

bachev allowed the majority of refuseniks to leave

as perestroika and glasnost gathered steam. With

the fall of the Soviet Union, most restrictions on

emigration were rescinded, and the Jewish exodus

became a flood.

See also: ISRAEL, RELATIONS WITH; JEWS; SINYAVSKY-

DANIEL TRIAL; THAW, THE

REFUSENIKS

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Lewin-Epstein, Noah; Ro’i, Yaacov; and Ritterband, Paul,

eds. (1997). Russian Jews on Three Continents: Migra-

tion and Resettlement. London: Frank Cass.

Morozov, Boris, ed. (1999). Documents on Soviet Jewish

Emigration. Portland, OR: Frank Cass.

ONATHAN

D. W

ALLACE

REGIONALISM

Regionalism is the idea or practice of dividing a

country into smaller units for political, economic,

social, and cultural purposes. Politically, regional-

ism is linked to decentralized or federalist govern-

ments. Regionalism is both cultural and political,

as its political success is linked to the development

of a regional culture. From 1759 to the 1860s,

Russian regionalism was primarily cultural. After

1861, Siberian regionalism combined cultural with

political demands. Under the Soviets, regionalism

retreated to a mainly cultural sphere of action. Af-

ter 1991, regionalism became a major political force.

In the eighteenth century, regional studies

arose from the center’s interest in geography and

from the periphery’s traditions of chronicle writ-

ing and regional pride. In the Petrine era, Vasily

Tatishchev established regional geography in the-

ory and practice by organizing expeditions to ex-

plore the regions. During the eighteenth century,

medieval chronicles evolved into more secular his-

tories of a town or region. In 1759 Vasily Kres-

tinin founded the first Russian local historical

society, the Society for Historical Investigations, in

Arkhangelsk. Krestinin’s work on Arkhangelsk his-

tory merged the statist genre of descriptive geog-

raphy with the chronicle traditions of the Russian

north. Regional journals, such as The Solitary Bump-

kin (Uyedinenny Poshekhonets) (Yaroslavl, 1786–1787)

and Irtysh (Tobolsk, 1789–1791), also helped to

foster a regional identity. The establishment of

provincial newspapers in all European provinces in

1837 furthered the process.

In the 1850s and 1860s, Siberian regionalism

(oblastnichestvo) combined the scholarship of feder-

alist historian Afanasy Shchapov and the political

activity of Nikolai Yadrintsev, for which the latter

and his group were arrested for separatism and ex-

iled to Arkhangelsk until 1874. Siberian regional-

ists argued that Siberia was a colony of Moscow

and demanded political rights. After 1905, Siberian

regionalists were elected to the Duma and discussed

the idea of a Siberian regional duma. The provin-

cial statistical committees, established in 1834,

the zemstvo (1864), and the provincial scholarly

archival commissions (1884) all published widely

on regional issues.

After the October Revolution in 1917, the Bol-

sheviks set out to centralize the country. During

the civil war, regions such as Siberia and Kaluga

proclaimed their independence. By the end of the

civil war, however, political regionalism was un-

der attack. The most viable regionalist institution

was the sovnarkhozy, or the regional economic

councils. In 1932 they were eliminated. Until Gor-

bachev, there was little room for political region-

alism. Moscow appointed regional leaders and,

apart from some passive resistance, they were obe-

dient. Culturally, the 1920s were the golden age of

regional studies (krayevedenie), but that ended in

1929 and 1930, when the Academy of Sciences and

the Central Bureau of Regional Studies and their re-

gional affiliates were purged. In 1966, the Society

for Preservation of Monuments of History and

Culture was established, with the right to open

provincial branches, which helped to create an in-

stitutional base for regional studies.

In 1985, when Mikhail Gorbachev came to

power, the regions began to rise in political power.

Legally, there were eighty-nine regions within the

Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR).

The RSFSR was unusual in that it was a federation

within the larger federation of the Soviet Union. Its

administrative divisions can be grouped into two

main categories: the mainly non-Russian ethnically-

based republics and the ethnically Russian terri-

torially based regions. In 1990 the “parade of

sovereignties” began, as the Union Republics (re-

publics of the Soviet Union) became independent

states. The RSFSR declared its sovereignty on June

12, 1990. Boris Yeltsin, who had just been elected

chair of the RSFSR’s Supreme Soviet, hoped to make

Gorbachev’s leadership of the Soviet Union redun-

dant by ending the Soviet Union. In August 1990,

Yeltsin told the heads of two of the RSFSR’s au-

tonomous republics to “take as much sovereignty as

you can swallow.” In 1991 the Soviet Union col-

lapsed, despite Gorbachev’s efforts to save it with the

Union Treaty. The RSFSR’s autonomous republics

had been about to sign the Union Treaty both as

members of the RSFSR and as Union Republics. Later,

several of the autonomous republics argued for their

sovereignty as independent states. After 1991 there

were two rounds of treaties to bind the eighty-nine

“subjects” (as all the administrative divisions were

REGIONALISM

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

termed) together as the Russian Federation. The first

was the Federation Treaties, which divided powers

between the center and the republics and regions in

an often ambiguous manner. The 1993 Russian Con-

stitution superseded the Federation Treaties, setting

off the second round of treaties, which often allowed

conflicting laws to coexist. Yeltsin’s administration

was marked by an increase in regionalism, as re-

gional elites gained power while the central state col-

lapsed. Yeltsin signed a series of bilateral treaties with

the subjects, ceding central power and producing an

ad hoc system of asymmetrical freedom.

Vladimir Putin has made curbing regionalism

a main priority of his presidency. One of his pri-

mary interests has been to create a single legal space

in the Russian Federation by ensuring that the law

of the subjects can no longer contradict federal law.

To this end, he has created seven super regions

superimposed over the other eighty-nine and staffed

by presidential appointees. In general, Putin’s desire

for a strong central state is not easily reconciled

with regionalist demands for a more decentralized

government.

See also: FEDERATION TREATIES; GEOGRAPHY; GORBA-

CHEV, MIKHAIL SERGEYEVICH; SOVNARKHOZY; UNION

TREATY; YELTSIN, BORIS NIKOLAYEVICH

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Evtuhov, Catherine. (1998). “Voices from the Provinces:

Living and Writing in Nizhnii Novgorod, 1870–1905.”

Journal of Popular Culture 34(4):33–48.

Gel’man, Vladimir. (1999). “Regime Transition, Uncer-

tainty, and Prospects for Democratisation: The Pol-

itics of Russia’s Regions in a Comparative

Perspective.” Europe-Asia Studies 51:939–956.

Herd, Graeme P., and Aldis, Anne, eds. (2003). Russian

Regions and Regionalism: Strength through Weakness.

London: RoutledgeCurzon.

Nikitin, N. P. (1966). “A History of Economic Geogra-

phy in Pre-Revolutionary Russia.” Soviet Geography:

Review and Translation 7(9):3–37.

Von Mohrenschildt, Dimitri. (1981). Toward a United

States of Russia: Plans and Projects of Federal Recon-

struction of Russia in the Nineteenth Century. Ruther-

ford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.

USAN

MITH

-P

ETER

REITERN, MIKHAIL KHRISTOFOROVICH

(1820–1890), financial official during the reign of

Alexander II.

As minister of finances, state secretary, mem-

ber of the State Council, and chairman of the Coun-

cil of Ministers, Count Mikhail Khristoforovich

Reitern oversaw Russia’s finances during the epoch

of the Great Reforms. Reitern was born in the city

of Poreche in Smolensk guberniya. His father, a

Livonian-German nobleman who distinguished

himself in Russian military service, died when the

boy was thirteen, leaving his widow to raise four-

teen children. Mikhail attended the prestigious Im-

perial Lyceum at Tsarskoe Selo on a scholarship

and graduated in 1839. Like most of his classmates,

he embarked upon a career in state service, joining

the Ministry of Finance in 1840. Three years later

he transferred to the Ministry of Justice, where he

remained until 1854, when he joined the staff of

the chief of the Main Naval Staff, Grand Duke Kon-

stantin Nikolayevich (the second son of Emperor

Nicholas I).

As one of the so-called Konstantinovtsy, the

circle of reform-minded officials around the grand

duke, Reitern carried out a variety of special com-

missions and inspections, and championed a series

of innovations that included cutting the number of

state-owned enterprises, abolishing obligated labor,

and contracting with private firms. He was largely

responsible for the Naval Ministry’s establishing a

pension fund for naval officers. In 1855 Reitern

went abroad to study finance and administrative

practices in Prussia, the United States, France, and

England. His reports stressed the utility of private

capital in the development of the national economy.

On his return in 1854, he was appointed to the

special committees on railroad development and the

banking system. The latter led to the founding in

1860 of Russia’s first central bank, the State Bank.

Reitern subsequently returned to the Ministry of

Finances as a senior official and in 1861 was named

to the Commission on Financing Peasant Affairs,

which worked out the financial arrangements for

the emancipation of the serfs.

In 1862 Alexander II appointed Reitern minis-

ter of finances, a post he held until 1878. During

his tenure he fostered greater glasnost in Russian

state finances (including the first published budget

in 1862) and reformed the tax system to include

more indirect taxation, such as excise taxes on spir-

its and salt. He sought unsuccessfully to restore the

convertibility of Russia’s paper rubles into gold and

silver, and in addition worked to balance the bud-

get but did not succeed until in the sixth year of

his tenure. Reitern was keen to sustain the empire’s

credit rating on international financial markets, but

REITERN, MIKHAIL KHRISTOFOROVICH

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

his efforts were frustrated by the economic conse-

quences of the Polish Rebellion of 1863. Reitern pro-

moted private railroad construction, shaped the

policies of the State Bank to enhance private in-

vestment, and drafted legislation for joint stock

companies. His tenure witnessed a great expansion

of Russian railroads from a little more than a thou-

sand miles in 1862 to close to fourteen thousand

by 1878. He favored both the integration of the na-

tional economy into the world economy and the

development of Russian industry as necessary to

ensure the empire’s welfare and security. In 1876,

as war loomed with Turkey, Reitern warned

Alexander II that the conflict would threaten Rus-

sia’s credit and finances, offering to resign when

Alexander II nonetheless decided upon war. At the

emperor’s request, he remained in office until the

conflict was over and resigned in June 1878.

Reitern remained a member of the State Coun-

cil, and in 1881 Alexander III appointed him chair-

man of the Council of Ministers, a post he held

until 1886, when he retired because of poor health.

See also: ECONOMY, TSARIST; GREAT REFORMS; RAILWAYS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Kipp, Jacob W. (1975). “M. Kh. Reutern on the Russian

State and Economy: A Liberal Bureaucrat during the

Crimean Era.” Journal of Modern History 47 (3):

437–459.

ACOB

W. K

IPP

RELIGION

Russia has been multireligious from its very in-

ception. When Kiev Rus adopted Eastern Orthodoxy

in 988, a gradual Christianization began, advanc-

ing slowly from urban elites to the lower classes

and countryside. Pagan belief and practice persisted,

however, and was sometimes incorporated into Or-

thodox ritual. Prerevolutionary historians termed

the resulting syncretism “dual faith” (dvoyeveriye),

emphasizing the survival of paganism and super-

ficiality of the Orthodox veneer. While simplistic,

that reductionist view of popular religion suggests

the complexity of religious cultures, the institu-

tional backwardness of the church, and the daunt-

ing geographic scale of the task it faced. Not until

the eighteenth century did the church, in any real

sense, construct the administrative tools needed to

standardize and regulate popular Orthodoxy.

By that time the empire was exploding in size

and religious diversity. Although medieval Russia

had absorbed peoples of other faiths (such as the

Muslim Tatars), religious pluralism became a pre-

dominant feature in the modern period. The state

annexed vast new territories of Siberia and eastern

Ukraine (in the seventeenth century) and then

added an array of new lands and peoples in the

eighteenth (Baltics, western Ukraine, Belarus) and

nineteenth centuries (the Caucasus, Poland, Fin-

land, and Central Asia). That expansion increased

the size and complexity of the non-Orthodox pop-

ulation exponentially. Although, according to the

census of 1897, the population remained predom-

inantly Eastern Orthodox (69.3%), the empire had

substantial numbers of non-Orthodox believers

(often concentrated in geographic areas): Muslims

(11.1%), Catholics (9.1%), Jews (4.2%), Lutherans

(2.7%), Old Believers (1.8%), and various other

Christian and non-Christian groups. Indeed, the

figures on the non-Orthodox side are understated:

the census failed to record adherents of persecuted

movements seeking to evade legal trouble.

This waxing religious pluralism posed a seri-

ous problem for a regime once imbued with a mes-

sianic identity as the Third Rome. Although the

process of accommodation commenced in the sev-

enteenth century, it sharply accelerated in the eigh-

teenth, as the regime sought to recruit foreign

mercenaries, specialists, and colonists. To reaffirm

the precedence of the Russian Orthodox Church, the

government adopted the principle of static religious

identity: each subject was to retain the original

faith (the sole permissible form of conversion be-

ing to Orthodoxy, with conversion from Ortho-

doxy criminalized as apotasy). For state officials

devoted to raison d’état what mattered most was

stability, not salvation—much to the chagrin of

Orthodox zealots. Indeed, that secularity prevailed

in the imperial manifesto of April 17, 1905, which,

in a futile attempt to quell the revolution of 1905,

granted freedom of religious belief. After an inter-

lude of broken promises and rising tensions, the

February Revolution finally brought full religious

freedom (including freedom of official religious af-

filiation and practice).

That freedom was short-lived: Once the Bol-

shevik regime came to power in October 1917, it

persecuted religious groups, with the assumption

that such superstition would promptly wither

away. Dismayed by signs of a religious revival, in

1929 the party unleashed a massive assault on all

religions, systematically closing houses of worship

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