Encyclopedia of Russian History

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.

World War II had a direct and long-term im-

pact on Soviet science policy. First, it ensured con-

tinued emphasis on applied research, in particular

military technology. Second, with the advent of the

atomic bomb project and then rocket technology,

it ensured large-scale approaches to research and

development. The average size of programs and in-

stitutes in the USSR grew to several times larger

than similar programs or institutes in other coun-

tries. Third, the evacuation of entire institutes and

personnel from areas under the siege of German

armies led to the dispersal of institutes to the Ural

Mountains region and Siberia.

Nikita Khrushchev, who followed Stalin, initi-

ated a series of reforms in Soviet society, abandon-

ing some aspects of Stalinism (although maintaining

one-party rule). The reforms had an impact on sci-

ence policy as well. The most significant impact was

the growth of the scientific enterprise. The total

number of scientists increased from 162,500 in 1950

to 665,000 in 1965, including an increase in the

number of senior and junior specialists from 62,000

to 140,000.

A second aspect of reform was decentralization

of the scientific enterprise, in part because of the

growth of the nuclear establishment. The most sig-

nificant sign of decentralization was the construc-

tion of Akademgorodok, a city of science built in

the early 1960s with twenty-one institutes, li-

brary, and university, near Novosibirsk in Siberia.

Another aspect of decentralization was the removal

of the technical division of the Academy of Sciences

and the placement of its institutes under the juris-

diction of industrial ministries.

Under Leonid Brezhnev a number of the

Khrushchev-era reforms were abandoned. While

there had been such great achievements in science

as the first artificial satellite (Sputnik) and successes

in nuclear power, Soviet science performed poorly

by such measures as scientific citation indices, No-

bel prizes, and assimilation of discoveries in pro-

duction. Rather than experiment with new forms

of organization or new directions of research, how-

ever, the Brezhnev administration further central-

ized policy making in major bureaucracies, raised

the level of ideological control, and established re-

newed vigilance toward contact with Western sci-

entists. While the scientific enterprise grew to

massive proportions—on the eve of its breakup the

USSR had one-third of the world’s engineers and

one-quarter of its physicists—it continued to per-

form poorly.

Mikhail Gorbachev championed “acceleration”

(uskorenie) of the achievements of research into the

production process. Like leaders before him, he be-

lieved in the power of science to help solve the so-

cial, economic, and other problems facing the

country. As part of glasnost and perestroika, Gor-

bachev’s policies encouraged rapid decentralization

of science policy and increasingly open discussion

of the poor performance of the sector. Scientists re-

organized professional societies for the first time

since the 1930s. They gained the opportunity to

travel abroad to conferences. Only the collapse of

the USSR facilitated significant reevaluation of sci-

ence policy in Russia. At the same time, because of

rapid inflation and decline in government revenues,

the scientific establishment lost much of its fund-

ing and stability for the first time since the 1920s.

Salaries were not paid for months at a time, and

research monies disappeared. International organi-

zations offered aid programs to discourage emi-

gration. In general, however, the Russian scientific

community has been slow to recover from the po-

litical and economic shocks of the 1990s.

See also: ACADEMY OF SCIENCES; LYSENKO, TROFIM

DENISOVICH; SPACE PROGRAM

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Balzer, Harley. (1989). Soviet Science on the Edge of Reform.

Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Graham, Loren. (1967). The Soviet Academy of Sciences and

the Communist Party, 1927–1932. Princeton, NJ:

Princeton University Press.

Graham, Loren. (1987). Science, Philosophy, and Human

Behavior in the Soviet Union. New York: Columbia

University Press.

Joravsky, David. (1970). The Lysenko Affair. Chicago:

University of Chicago Press.

Lubrano, Linda, and Solomon, Susan. (1980). The Social

Context of Soviet Science. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Parrott, Bruce. (1983). Politics and Technology in the So-

viet Union. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

AUL

R. J

OSEPHSON

SCIENCE FICTION

Science fiction is a literary genre that extrapolates

from existing knowledge about the real world to

speculate about alternative worlds. It always in-

cludes an element of the fantastic, since it aims to

go beyond what is, to give a literary model of

SCIENCE FICTION

1353

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

“what if?” Unlike pure fantasy or utopian litera-

ture, however, science fiction posits a rational ex-

ploration of as-yet inexplicable phenomena and

unknown corners of the human psyche. In Russia

the most important works of science fiction have

usually been viewed as subversive to the regime in

power because of their ability to model alternative

realities, to evade censorship by displacing political

allegories to the juvenile realm of cosmic adven-

ture, and to tap into the Russian readership’s per-

sistent longings for a more just society.

The first, mid-nineteenth century works of

Russian science fiction blend the rational utopianism

of European models with the age-old Russian folk

vision of communal justice and abundance for all.

The idea that Western-oriented scientific and tech-

nological progress might be combined in Russia

with egalitarian values, avoiding the evils of both

autocracy and capitalism, is one of the strongest

and most consistent strains in Russian science fic-

tion. Nikolai Chernyshevsky’s 1862 novel What Is

to Be Done? created a fictional model of this idea that

inspired generations of Russian revolutionaries, in-

cluding Lenin. Alexander Bogdanov’s The Red Star

(1908) depicts a socially and scientifically progres-

sive society on Mars that is superior to existing

earthly alternatives. In the decade following the

1917 Bolshevik Revolution, many stories extolled a

cosmic revolution, anticipating the victorious spread

of classless societies to other planets with the help

of futuristic technology and radically evolved hu-

man consciousness. As late as the 1970s, the writ-

ers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky countered official

literary depictions of Soviet society with science fic-

tion imaginings of alternative societies where ratio-

nality, science, and human freedom are not at odds.

A second, and opposing strain, is the dystopian

vision of society dehumanized by the relentless ra-

tionalization of work, health, social, and spiritual

life. Yevgeny Zamyatin’s novel We (1924, unpub-

lished; 1989) is a brilliant philosophical satire de-

picting “mathematically happy” workers in the

One State, where free will has been all but elimi-

nated. Extrapolating tendencies from both bour-

geois and socialist systems of conformity, We

insists on the paramount value of individual free

will. Zamyatin’s novel, and later Western novels

based on similar ideas (e.g., George Orwell’s 1984

) were banned in the Soviet Union. After 1957, the

launch of Sputnik and the gradual relaxation of

ideological restrictions inaugurated a new era of So-

viet science fiction. In the immensely popular

works of Ivan Yefremov and the brothers Stru-

gatsky, Russian readers found a forum in which

their authentic political and cultural aspirations

were given a voice—along with an exciting plot.

They offered richly imagined histories of the future

to remind the reader of the outcome of ethical

choices made in the present. Russian literature has

often served as the conscience of the nation, and

twenty-first century Russian science fiction con-

tinues the tradition of ideological engagement, by

addressing such themes as contemporary social

malaise and the search for a new, post-Soviet Rus-

sian cultural identity.

See also: CHERNYSHEVSKY, NIKOLAI GAVRILOVICH

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fetzer, Leland, ed. (1982). Pre-Revolutionary Russian Sci-

ence Fiction: An Anthology. Ann Arbor: Ardis.

Gomel, Elana. (1999). “Science Fiction in Russia: From

Utopia to New Age.” Science Fiction Studies 26(3):

435–441.

Howell, Yvonne. (1994). Apocalyptic Realism: The Science

Fiction of Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. New York: Pe-

ter Lang.

Suvin, Darko. (1979). “Russian SF and Its Utopian Tra-

dition.” In Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Po-

etics and History of a Literary Genre. New Haven, CT:

Yale University Press.

VONNE

ELEN

OWELL

SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

The term scientific socialism was used by Friedrich

Engels to characterize the doctrines that he and Karl

Marx developed and distinguish them from other

socialist doctrines, which he dismissed as utopian

socialism. Engels regarded the Marx-Engels doc-

trines as scientific in that they laid bare the secret

of capitalism through the discovery of surplus

value, and explained (with a theory known in the

USSR as historical materialism) how capitalism

would inevitably be overthrown and replaced by

socialism. The concept “scientific socialism” made

Marxist doctrines more attractive to many than ri-

val socialist doctrines by suggesting that equality

and the end of exploitation were not only desirable

but also inevitable.

Scientific socialism was introduced to Russia in

the late ninenteenth century. After the Bolshevik

victory in the civil war, scientific socialism became

SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

1354

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

part of the official ideology of the USSR. The term

itself was frequently used loosely to designate a

doctrine concerning the development of a Soviet

type of society. Much of the actual content of the

doctrine varied over time in accordance with the

concrete policies of the Soviet state.

Socialism as a comprehensive social system

failed to spread to the advanced capitalist countries

(although “pension fund socialism,” the growth of

government welfare and regulatory programs, the

expansion of employee rights, state-owned indus-

tries, public education, and universal suffrage, were

widespread and important). This failure, along

with other developments such as the collapse of the

USSR, indicated that scientific socialism was an im-

perfect guide to the future. By the end of the twen-

tieth century, the term was mainly of historical

interest.

See also: NEW ECONOMIC POLICY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Gregory, Paul R., and Stuart, Robert C. (2001). Russian

and Soviet Economic Performance and Structure, 7th ed.

New York: Addison Wesley Longman.

Nove, Alec. (1982). An Economic History of the U.S.S.R.

New York: Penguin.

Sah, R. K., and Stiglitz, J. E. (1984). “The Economics of

Price Scissors.” The American Economic Review 74(1):

125–138.

OBERT

C. S

TUART

SCYTHIANS

The Scythians were a large confederation of Iran-

ian-speaking (or headed by an Iranian-speaking

military-political elite) tribal unions, known in

classical sources since around the eighth century

. or about the time they migrated to the North

Pontic steppe zone where they supplanted and ap-

parently absorbed some of the Cimmerians who oc-

cupied the region. As with their predecessors, it is

not clear from where the Scythians migrated, but

their most likely homeland was Central Asia from

where they moved under pressure of other nomadic

peoples. Organized in supra-tribal confederations,

the Scythians made raids and full-blown invasions

from the northern Caucasus into Media and As-

syria in northern Mesopotamia, reaching as far as

Palestine and Egypt throughout the period of

670–610

. After suffering major defeats to-

wards the end of the seventh century, they trans-

ferred their locus of power to the North Pontic

region. By the third century

., the Scythians

came under pressure of the nomadic Sarmatians

who destroyed and absorbed most of them into

their loosely-organized tribal structure.

Nomadic in origins, the Scythian peoples and

the “Scythian” culture also included agricultural-

ists and hunter-gatherers who paid tribute to their

nomadic lords with grain and other goods that the

nomads could not produce themselves. In turn,

these items were traded with the Greek colonial

cities of the northern Black Sea region for wine,

precious metals, and other goods.

While Scythia proper, as it was known in Greco-

Roman sources, was located to the north of the

Black Sea region (from the Danube to the lower

Don and Volga), “Scythic” culture occupied a much

greater territory of Eurasia, stretching as far east

as southwestern Siberia and eastern Kazakhstan.

Elements of this culture can be summarized as fol-

lows: the use of (1) iron; (2) short swords; (3) con-

servative artistic motifs (especially the animal style,

e.g., the stag and the animal combat); (4) nomadic

lifestyle organized around a patriarchal, little cen-

tralized social structure; (5) improved compound

bows; (6) bronze cauldrons; (7) making of deer-

stones; and, (8) complex horse harness. All of these

components were shared across a huge area not

only by Iranian-speakers, but also by Turkic and

Mongolian nomads of steppelands of Inner Eurasia.

See also: CENTRAL ASIA; CIMMERIANS; SARMATIANS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Christian, David. (1998). A History of Russia, Central Asia

and Mongolia Vol. 1: Inner Asia from Prehistory to the

Mongol Empire. Oxford, UK/Malden, MA: Blackwell.

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

sian Steppe.” In The Cambridge History of Early Inner

Asia. ed. Denis Sinor. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-

versity Press.

Talbot-Rice, Tamara (1957). The Scythians [Ancient Peo-

ples and Places, vol. 2], ed. G. Daniel. London:

Thames and Hudson.

OMAN

K. K

OVALEV

SECOND ECONOMY

The second economy of the USSR included eco-

nomic activities that supplemented the command,

or first, economy. As defined by Gregory Gross-

SCYTHIANS

1356

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

man, the second economy consisted of all produc-

tion and exchange undertaken directly for private

gain, knowingly illegal in some substantial way,

or both. This definition encompassed both legal and

illegal activities, but most studies focus on the il-

legal part, also referred to as underground, unof-

ficial, or shadow economy, or the black market.

The legal second economy was made up mainly

of private agriculture, small-scale construction ser-

vices, extraction of precious metals, hunting of

valuable wild animals, and certain professional ser-

vices, such as those provided by physicians, den-

tists, and tutors.

The illegal economy was significantly larger

than the legal part of the second economy. Legal

private activities often served as fronts for illegal

ones. The most common illegal economic activity

in the USSR was theft of state property. Presum-

ably the second-most widespread illegal activity

was the corruption that reached into the highest

echelons of power; one purpose of corruption was

to protect the functioning of the rest of the illegal

economy. Another major illegal activity was spec-

ulation, defined as resale of goods by individuals

for profit. Unlike theft from the state sector and

corruption, which would be illegal anywhere, spec-

ulation was a crime only in socialist economies.

Illegal production by individuals or by teams

was also significant. Much of the illegal produc-

tion for private purposes took place at state enter-

prises. Output was usually sold privately, but

sometimes it was distributed through the official

retail trade network. Private manufacturing with-

out an official facade also existed.

None of the major conditions giving rise to the

existence of a large underground economy were

unique to the USSR, but the way they came to-

gether in Soviet society was unusual and created a

highly favorable environment for an illegal econ-

omy. These conditions included price controls on

virtually all consumer goods, the prohibition of

many private economic activities and high taxes on

others, the ubiquity and poor protection of public

property, the immense discretionary power of

poorly paid bureaucrats, and social attitudes that

tolerated theft of state property, corruption, and

many other economic illegalities.

While the Soviet second economy was large, its

magnitude, especially in the illegal sphere, is diffi-

cult to ascertain. One widely used way to estimate

the extent of the second economy was based on in-

terviewing emigrants from the USSR about their

lives prior to emigration. Three major surveys were

performed in Israel and the United States in the

1970s and 1980s. The Berkeley-Duke household

budget survey, the only one focused explicitly on

the second economy, implied that about 27 percent

of urban household income in Russia in the late

1970s was derived from the second economy. The

corresponding estimates from the other two sur-

veys were about half that amount.

Evaluating second economy dynamics is even

more difficult. One methodology infers the growth

of the second economy from comparisons of elec-

tricity consumption with the official Gross Do-

mestic Product. This approach indicates that

Russia’s second economy grew by more than 80

percent between 1979 and 1989.

The rise of the second economy amounted to

an implicit market reform within the Soviet sys-

tem, but it also facilitated or even compelled the

partial reforms of perestroika, which expanded the

scope of the legal second economy. Nonetheless, the

illegal and quasi-legal economy also mushroomed,

undermining central planning and leading to the

economic transition to markets starting in 1992.

During the transition, the notion of a second econ-

omy was restricted to illegal activities, the growth

of which continued throughout the 1990s. The rea-

sons for this growth included persistent excessive

regulation of the economy, high statutory tax

rates, weakening of official institutions and their

inability to protect property rights protection and

enforce contracts, lack of credibility of government

reform policies, and continued corruption. The il-

legal second economy may have benefited from the

emergence of the mafia, which taxes underground

firms but also provides property rights protection

for its victim/clients.

The existence of a large second economy, and

particularly its illegal part, had important implica-

tions for Russia’s economy both before and after

the collapse of the USSR. First, underground activ-

ity hinders an accurate understanding of the econ-

omy and impedes policy-making by distorting

various statistics, including GDP data, household

incomes and their distribution, and employment.

Additionally, the illegal economy weakens the feed-

back to policy-makers on government decisions

and actions, undermines official institutions, and

promotes corruption. From an efficiency point of

view, the illegal economy suffers from the black

market’s need for secrecy, which results in poor

flows of information, greater operational uncer-

tainty, and suboptimally small-scale production.

SECOND ECONOMY

1357

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

Economic distortions also appear because some ac-

tivities are easier to hide than others. At the same

time, the second economy often benefits a centrally

planned economy by improving incentives and re-

source allocation. During the post-Soviet transi-

tion, the existence of the second economy restricted

the government’s ability to tax and regulate ex-

cessively. On the margin, the net balance between

the second economy’s costs and benefits to society

depends on its size and other factors, and is a dif-

ficult empirical question.

See also: BLACK MARKET; COMMAND ADMINISTRATIVE

ECONOMY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alexeev, Michael, and Pyle, William. (2003). “A Note on

Measuring the Unofficial Economy in the Former

Soviet Republics.” Economics of Transition 11(1):

153–175.

Grossman, Gregory. (1977). “The ‘Second Economy’ of

the USSR.” Problems of Communism 26(5):25–40.

Grossman, Gregory. (1979). “Notes on the Illegal Private

Economy and Corruption.” In Soviet Economy in a

Time of Change, Vol. 1, Washington, DC: U.S. Gov-

ernment Printing Office.

Grossman, Gregory. (1982). “The ‘Shadow Economy’ in

the Socialist Sector of the USSR.” In The CMEA Five-

Year Plans (1981–1985) in New Perspective. Brussels:

NATO Colloquium.

Johnson, Simon; Kaufmann, Daniel; and Shleifer, Andrei.

(1997). “The Unofficial Economy in Transition.”

Brookings Papers on Economic Activity 2:159–239.

Leitzel, Jim. (1995). Russian Economic Reform. New York:

Routledge.

Schneider, Friedrich, and Enste, Dominik. (2000). “Shadow

Economies: Size, Causes, and Consequences.” Journal

of Economic Literature 38(1):77–114.

Treml, Vladimir, and Alexeev, Michael. (1994). “The

Growth of the Second Economy in the Soviet Union

and Its Impact.” In Issues in the Transformation of Cen-

trally Planned Economies, ed. Robert Campbell. Boul-

der, CO: Westview Press.

ICHAEL

LEXEEV

SECOND SECRETARY

The second secretary was the number-two position

at every level, from top to bottom, of the admin-

istrative apparatus (secretariat) of the Communist

Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). From Central

Committee headquarters (“the Center”) in Moscow

at the top to the republics, provinces, and cities be-

low, secretariats were the Party’s hands-on execu-

tive organs. They controlled the work of more than

200,000 full-time officials and employees, known

collectively as the nomenklatura. The second sec-

retaries were key figures because at every level of

authority they controlled the appointment of Party

and government officials.

The topmost secretary in Moscow was general

secretary, or sometimes called the first secretary. The

latter term was likewise applied to local number-one

secretaries at the middle and lower rungs of the Party

hierarchy. Second-in-command in these secretariats

was the second secretary. His function was to ad-

minister crucial personnel matters throughout the

given political-administrative region or locale in the

USSR. In republics or other units where the first sec-

retary was drawn from a titular ethnic group, the

second secretary was always a Russian for oversight.

The second secretary had the authority to ap-

point and dismiss nomenklaturists at the various

levels of Party and government rule. Any number

of Party functionaries who were later promoted

from below to Moscow Center earned their status

by having served as second secretaries.

In Josef Stalin’s time, one of the most power-

ful officials of this kind was Georgy Malenkov,

who functioned largely as Stalin’s number-two

man-in-charge of personnel, or de facto second sec-

retary. Like other second secretaries, top to bottom,

Malenkov was also a member of the Party’s most

important political organ, the Politburo, which at

the local levels was called the “Buro.” After Stalin’s

death in March 1953, Malenkov functioned briefly

as first secretary and then was transferred to the

office of prime minister of the USSR.

It was not unusual for former secretaries, espe-

cially second secretaries, to assume high government

office at some level of Party or state administra-

tion. Any number of important Party officials and

members of the central Politburo were first secre-

taries at one time or another, and many were also

once second secretaries on lower rungs of the Party

hierarchy.

In the final period of Soviet rule (after 1985),

Yegor Ligachev was perhaps the best-known sec-

ond secretary. After serving as a second secretary

in various provincial administration, he was trans-

ferred to Moscow in 1983. There, because he was

in charge of personnel affairs at the top, Ligachev

became the second most powerful figure in the

SECOND SECRETARY

1358

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

party when Mikhail Gorbachev became general sec-

retary in 1985. Ligachev was soon embroiled in

policy and personnel disputes with both Gorbachev

and the then first secretary of the Moscow Party

apparatus, Boris Yeltsin. As second secretary, Lig-

achev remained a key figure in the regime down to

the demise of communist and Soviet rule in Russia

in late 1991.

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

ERAL SECRETARY; GORBACHEV, MIKHAIL SERGEYEVICH;

YELTSIN, BORIS NIKOLAYEVICH

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Reshetar, John S. (1971). The Soviet Polity Government and

Politics in the USSR. New York: Dodd, Mead.

Towster, Julian. (1948). Political Power in the USSR,

1917–1947: The Theory and Structure of Government

in the Soviet State. New York: Oxford University Press.

Weeks, Albert L. (1987). The Soviet Nomenklatura: A Com-

prehensive Roster of Soviet Civilian and Military Offi-

cials. Washington, DC: Washington Institute Press.

LBERT

L. W

EEKS

SECRETARIAT

The Secretariat of the Communist Party of the So-

viet Union (CPSU) was the administrative arm of

the Communist Party. Initially a handful of party

workers, the Secretariat evolved into a powerful

bureaucracy with oversight of the entire Soviet po-

litical system and economy. Although the size of

the Secretariat was modest in comparison to the

giant governmental bureaucracy, its power was

not. It was the apparat and those who worked in

the Secretariat were the apparatchiki. Headed by the

General (or First) Secretary and the other Secretaries

of the Central Committee of the CPSU, the Secre-

tariat became the body that ensured that Soviet po-

litical and economic organs followed party policy.

Josef Stalin was responsible for building the Secre-

tariat, and Nikita Khrushchev was responsible for

reaffirming and renewing its power. Its influence

diminished only under Mikail Gorbachev, who in

his final years, turned to the power of the Presi-

dency and a Presidential Cabinet of Ministers,

which was created in 1990.

At the height of its power, the Secretariat headed

by its powerful General Secretary determined the

agenda of the Politburo and the Central Commit-

tee. Attention usually focused on the General Sec-

retary, and to a lesser degree, the dozen or so Sec-

retaries who worked with him, rather than the

larger bureaucracy that constituted the Secretariat.

See also: COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Huskey, Eugene. (1992). Executive Power and Soviet Poli-

tics: The Rise and Decline of the Soviet State. Armonk,

NY: M. E. Sharpe.

Nogee, Joseph L., ed. (1985). Soviet Politics: Russia after

Brezhnev. New York: Praeger.

Smith, Gordon B. (1992). Soviet Politics: Struggling with

Change, 2nd ed. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

ORMA

C. N

OONAN

SECTARIANISM

Religious dissent from the Russian Orthodox

Church.

The word sect entered the Russian language in

the eighteenth century from the Latin word secta.

Long used in the Catholic Church to indicate groups

or parties that had separated themselves from or-

thodox teaching, the word was adopted by the

Russian Orthodox Church during the reign of Pe-

ter the Great (r. 1682–1725) to label the increas-

ing numbers of religious dissenters.

The first substantial movement of Christian

dissent occurred only in the seventeenth century in

response to the liturgical and bureaucratic innova-

tions of Patriarch Nikon of Moscow (r. 1652–1658).

By the 1680s, those who opposed these new re-

forms called themselves “Old Believers”; many of

them withdrew from the Church and society to

create their own purified communities on the out-

skirts of the Muscovite state. Although Old Believ-

ers were sometimes tarred with the label “sect,” by

the late nineteenth century Russian Orthodox here-

siology began to reserve the word sectarian for the

growing numbers of religious dissenters who had

separated themselves from the state church for rea-

sons other than Nikon’s reforms. In accordance

with this usage, this article deals only with those

sectarians who were not Old Believers. It also does

not deal with the fourteenth-century Judaizers and

its predecessors.

SECTARIANISM

1359

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

THE FAITH OF CHRIST (FLAGELLANTS)

AND THE CASTRATES

The Faith of Christ (khristovshchina) arose in the

seventeenth century. Its members continued to visit

the Orthodox state church, but also met in secret

assemblies where they repeated the Jesus prayer

(Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me,

a sinner) until the Holy Spirit descended upon them

and they danced, prophesied, and spoke in tongues.

In their secret assemblies, they believed that they

had recovered the original faith and practice of

Christ. Following a realized eschatology, they also

believed that Christ had returned spiritually to

dwell in their leaders whom they called Christs and

Mothers of God. They composed a rich repertoire

of spiritual songs celebrating these leaders and their

faith. The adherents of the Faith of Christ practiced

an intense asceticism that included celibacy, re-

stricted diet, long periods of prayer, and fasting.

Over time, some of them flagellated themselves,

and so they became known as flagellants. This la-

bel was applied indiscriminately to many different

sectarians, most of whom did not practice flagel-

lation.

The Faith of Christ established broad religious,

social, and economic networks across the Russian

Empire. The grave of the monastery peasant Danilo

Filippov (d. c. 1700), one of the early leaders of the

sect, was located in a small village near Kostroma;

it attracted pilgrims from cities and towns all over

central Russia for at least two centuries. The mem-

bers of the Faith of Christ used money earned in

the textile trade to support their co-religionists who

entered Orthodox monasteries.

In 1733 and again in 1745, extensive state in-

vestigations sought to eliminate the movement by

arresting and sentencing hundreds of suspects. By

forcing the defendants to confess falsely to horrible

crimes of secret mass orgies, infanticide, and can-

nibalism, the inquisitors of the second commission

helped to create a powerful myth that envisioned

the flagellants as a dangerous, homicidal, sexually

perverted fifth column within Russian society.

By the 1760s, some members of the Faith of

Christ, not satisfied with vows of celibacy, began

castrating themselves. Under the leadership of the

fugitive peasant Kondraty Selivanov (d. 1832),

these castrates broke away from the Faith of Christ

and created their own peculiar rituals and escha-

tology. In its rich tradition of spiritual songs, the

Castrates claimed that their leader Selivanov was

actually Emperor Peter III (r. 1762)—the unfortu-

nate husband of Catherine the Great (r. 1762–1796).

Though the real Peter III was killed in Catherine’s

1762 coup, the Castrates held that he actually es-

caped to Orel province where, as the peasant Kon-

dratii Selivanov, he was arrested and exiled to

Siberia. After Catherine’s death, the legend claims

that Emperor Paul (r. 1796–1801) recalled Selivanov

to St. Petersburg, where he recognized him as his

father.

Although Selivanov lived and taught freely in

St. Petersburg from 1802 to 1820, he spent the last

twelve years of his life in a monastery prison in

Suzdal. Thanks in part to their severe asceticism,

many of the Castrates became wealthy merchants.

Because they were severely persecuted, the Cas-

trates outwardly adhered to the Orthodox Church

and often proved to be generous patrons.

SPIRITUAL CHRISTIANITY:

DUKHOBORS AND MOLOKANS

Spiritual Christianity, another powerful strain of

sectarianism, arose as an apocalyptic movement in

the 1760s in the black-earth region of Tambov

province. Preaching that the day of the Lord was

imminent, Ilarion Pobirokhin (fl. 1762–1785)

called on true Christians to stop venerating icons

and to reject the Orthodox sacraments and priest-

hood. Instead of kissing icons, they kissed one an-

other, and especially their leader, as the image of

God. They met together regularly to read the Bible,

sing spiritual psalms of their own composition, and

listen to their teachers’ sermons.

Despite state efforts to repress them, the Spir-

itual Christians, who were also called the Dukhobors

(Spirit-Wrestlers), survived. In an effort to isolate

them from their Orthodox neighbors, the Russian

state in 1802 first resettled them in Melitopol in

Crimea, and then in 1841–1845 forcibly moved

them to the Caucasus. In these isolated colonies,

the Dukhobors largely governed themselves and

followed their own folkways. Led by charismatic

descendants of Pobirokhin and a Council of Elders,

the Dukhobors preached that God’s Spirit lived in

all people, both men and women. Although they

used the Bible, they emphasized their own oral tra-

dition of spiritual psalms, which they called the

Living Book.

By the 1880s, the Dukhobors numbered about

twenty thousand. A radical group of Dukhobors

led by Petr Verigin (d. 1935) preached pacificism,

rejected military service, and struggled to take over

the community in 1886–1898. In 1898, Verigin led

his followers to immigrate to Canada.

SECTARIANISM

1360

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

A second group of Spiritual Christians, known

as the Molokans (milk-drinkers, because they did not

observe the Orthodox fasting periods in which milk

was forbidden), broke away from the Dukhobors.

Semen Uklein (d. 1809), an erstwhile follower of

Ilarion Pobirokhin, insisted on the authority of the

Bible, and went on to preach his own version of

Spiritual Christianity throughout the provinces of

the lower Volga in 1790s. Like the Dukhobors, the

Molokans rejected icons, sacraments, and priest-

hood. But as serious students of the Bible, Uklein’s

followers also observed Old Testament holidays and

dietary restrictions.

In the 1830s, a group of inspired apocalyptic

Molokan prophets predicted that the world would

end in 1836 and introduced ecstatic dancing and

singing into the Molokan meetings. Lukian Petrov

Sokolov (d. 1858) led his followers to Mount Ararat

to await the return of Christ. Despite the failure of

this prophecy, these Molokan “Jumpers” retained

their ecstatic practices and regrouped under a new

charismatic leader, Maksim Rudometikin (d. 1877).

From the late nineteenth century, new prophets

taught pacifism and their new apocalyptic visions

encouraged the Jumpers to emigrate and establish

colonies in California, South America, Mexico, and

Arizona.

WESTERN RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS

In the 1830s, German pietists introduced a revival

in the German colonies of the Ukraine. By the

1860s, this revival, which emphasized personal

prayer and a Bible study hour [Stunde in German],

had been adopted by Ukrainian and Russian peas-

ants who lived near the German colonists. Although

initially these Shtundists, as they came to be called,

wanted to remain in the Orthodox Church, the Or-

thodox hierarchy rejected their independent Bible

studies and the Protestant doctrine of salvation

through faith alone. Ultimately, many of these

Ukrainian and Russian peasants turned away from

Orthodoxy to embrace Baptism. In 1867, Nikita

Voronin, a convert from Molokanism, was the first

Russian to receive baptism. A Russian Baptist Union

was created in 1884.

Other Protestant movements also gained Rus-

sian adherents. German and American preachers

brought Seventh-Day Adventism into Russia in the

1880s. In the 1870s in the northern capital of St.

Petersburg, the pietistic preaching of the English

Lord Radstock established a pietistic following that

later helped to support the formation of a Union

of Evangelical Christians in 1909.

Overwhelmed by the 1905 revolution, the

tsarist government issued an edict of religious tol-

eration that allowed much greater freedom of

worship—though not of proselytizing—to most

sectarians. Baptists, Molokans, Seventh-Day Ad-

ventists, and Evangelical Christians created their

own legal organizations, published newspapers,

books, and journals. A 1912 census counted

393,565 sectarians (not including the Old Believ-

ers). Taken together, Baptists and Evangelical

Christians were the largest group, with more than

143,000 adherents; Molokans represented the next

largest group with 133,935.

THE SOVIET PERIOD

After the 1917 revolution, the Bolshevik govern-

ment initially courted sectarians, but this policy

came to an end in 1929 with the First Five Year

Plan. In the 1930s, the Soviet Union attempted to

eliminate religion altogether by closing and de-

stroying churches and arresting religious leaders.

This policy failed, and resistance to the forced col-

lectivization of agriculture actually provoked new

apocalyptic sectarian movements which attacked

the Soviet state as the “red dragon” of the Apoca-

lypse. Persecution of the Orthodox Church forced

some of its members underground to form the True

Orthodox Church. Rejecting the Moscow Patriar-

chate as hopelessly compromised, the members of

the True Orthodox Church claimed that they alone

maintained the true faith.

The German invasion of the USSR in 1941

forced Josef Stalin to moderate his antireligious

policies and to allow limited legal existence of sec-

tarian groups. In 1944, Baptists and Evangelical

Christians formed the All-Union Council of Evan-

gelical Christians and Baptists, and soon Adven-

tists also were granted a national organization.

Dissatisfaction with the limits on religious free-

dom and a renewed antireligious campaign under

Nikita Khrushchev led some Baptists and Adven-

tists to form independent, underground organiza-

tions in the 1960s: the Council of Churches of

Evangelical Christian Baptists and the True and

Free Seventh-Day Adventists. The Soviet period

also witnessed the vigorous growth of Pente-

costals, who had first appeared in Russia in 1913.

In the 1970s and 1980s, circles of educated urban

intellectuals sometimes faced persecution for their

interest and participation in Eastern religions, in-

cluding Tibetan Buddhism and the Hare Krishna

movement.

SECTARIANISM

1361

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

THE POST-SOVIET PERIOD

In 1990 the Soviet parliament passed a law allow-

ing complete religious freedom and ushered in a

new, open spiritual marketplace. Missionaries from

the United States and Western Europe helped to

establish and finance Mormon ward, Jehovah’s

Witnesses kingdom halls, and charismatic and

evangelical churches. Underground movements,

such as the True Orthodox Christians, the Interna-

tional Society of Krishna Consciousness, and the

Baptist Council of Churches, emerged to compete in

the new atmosphere.

The new freedom, and the collapse of the So-

viet economic and political systems, also encour-

aged the formation of new sectarian movements.

Distressed by the moral degeneration of Russian so-

ciety, prophets from the Church of the Transfig-

uring Theotokos claimed that the Mother of God

had appeared to warn Russia and the world of an

impending judgment. The White Brotherhood, a

syncretic movement, combining elements of Hin-

duism and Orthodox Christianity, gathered to wit-

ness the end of the world in Kiev in 1993.

Alarmed by these apocalyptic movements and

by the influx of foreign missionaries, the Russian

parliament in 1997 passed a new law that favored

the traditional religions of Russia. Local administra-

tions have interpreted the law quite differently, so

that the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who have peacefully

established their headquarters in St. Petersburg, have

also had to defend themselves in Moscow courts.

Sectarianism first became significant in Russia

in the seventeenth century. On the one hand, sec-

tarianism represented the growth of individual ini-

tiative and freedom, as religious virtuosi took upon

themselves the responsibility of constructing and

living out new religious visions. But on the other

hand, the classification and enumeration of sects

reflect the growth of bureaucratic systems of so-

cial control in both state and church. The contin-

ued vitality of sectarianism in the twenty-first

century is a product of the dialectic between these

two opposite trends.

See also: OLD BELIEVERS; ORTHODOXY; PROTESTANTISM

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Anderson, John. (1994). Religion, State and Politics in the

Soviet Union and Successor States. New York: Cam-

bridge University Press.

Bolshakoff, Serge. (1950). Russian Nonconformity: The

Story of “Unofficial” Religion in Russia. Philadelphia:

Westminster Press.

Conybeare, Frederick C. (1962). Russian Dissenters. New

York: Russell and Russell.

Engelstein, Laura. (1999). Castration and the Heavenly

Kingdom: A Russian Folktale. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Uni-

versity Press.

Sawatsky, Walter. (1981). Soviet Evangelicals since World

War II. Scottdale, PA: Herald Press.

Witte, John, and Bourdeaux, Michael, eds. (1999). Pros-

elytism and Orthodoxy in Russia: The New War for

Souls. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Press.

J. E

UGENE

LAY

SECURITY COUNCIL

The April 1991 law creating the office of president

of the Russian Federation also created a Security

Council, succeeding the security council created by

Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in November

1990 and presumably modeled after the National

Security Council in the United States. Formally es-

tablished by a March 1992 law, the Security Coun-

cil was chaired by the president and met once per

month, with a staff of about two hundred and half

a dozen commissions working at its direction. Since

1993 its membership has varied, at the discretion

of the president, from seven officials in 1996 to

more than twenty-five since 2000, when it in-

cluded the prime minister and the heads of the

“power ministries” (defense, foreign affairs, inte-

rior, emergencies, Federal Border Service, and Fed-

eral Security Service) plus the justice minister, the

procurator-general, the heads of the two houses of

parliament, and the governors of the seven federal

districts created by President Vladimir Putin.

Back in 1992 the Security Council was super-

vised by State Secretary Gennady Burbulis, and its

first secretary was the industrialist Yuri Skokov.

It was seen as a conservative counter-balance to

the liberal foreign minister, Andrei Kozyrev. Some

speculated that it might become a new Politburo,

well-insulated from democratic accountability. In

practice the council never became a decision-mak-

ing forum, but merely provided analysis and ad-

vice to the president. It was supposed to exercise a

coordinating role and enforce and extend presi-

dential control, but in practice the ministries of de-

fense and foreign affairs jealously guarded their

autonomy. The council was periodically tasked

with drawing up guidelines or concepts for Rus-

sian foreign policy, but these did not have much

SECURITY COUNCIL

1362

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY