Encyclopedia of Russian History

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At the end of the nineteenth century, Vladimir

Soloviev sought to counter the secular trend in

Russian thought by articulating a world view

grounded in Christianity. As a young man, Soloviev

seemed destined to become the foremost academic

philosopher of the Slavophile school, and his early

works, such as The Crisis of Western Philosophy:

Against the Positivists (1874), reflected Slavophile

themes, but in time he gravitated from Slavo-

philism to Westernism, much like his father, the

renowned historian Sergei Mikhailovich Soloviev.

When Alexander II was assassinated in 1881,

Soloviev called upon the new tsar to set an exam-

ple of Christian forgiveness by sparing the lives of

the terrorists. The ensuing scandal led to his exile

from Russia’s government-controlled universities,

a lifelong career as an independent writer, and even-

tually an association with the liberal journal Vest-

nik Evropy (European Messenger). Soloviev led an

unconventional life as a kind of secular monk ded-

icated to intense intellectual work; the result was

a remarkable output of philosophy, theology, po-

etry, literary criticism, and social commentary.

Soloviev’s philosophical approach was a syn-

thesis of Western philosophy (particularly German

idealist thought) and the Orthodox faith in which

he had been raised. His philosophical system em-

phasized the integration of science, philosophy, and

religion. At the center of his philosophical outlook

was the concept of the unity of all—the idea that

the world was an Absolute in the process of be-

coming. On this basis, he developed a unique Chris-

tian metaphysics in his Lectures on God-Manhood

(1877–1881). He argued that reality had been frac-

tured by the Fall, and that history, the center of

which was the Incarnation of Christ (the “God-

man”), was a process leading to renewal of the

unity of all. In this work, he also introduced the

elusive concept of Sophia, which at various times

he referred to as the “world soul,” the ideal of a

perfect humanity, and the “eternal feminine” prin-

ciple in the Divine.

Soloviev’s fascination with Sophia was reflected

in personal mystical experience. His reputation as

a mystic derived from his poetry, most famously

the poem “Three Meetings,” in which he described

three encounters with Sophia, first as a young boy,

then during his studies in the British Museum, and

finally in the Egyptian desert.

Meanwhile Soloviev was developing a liberal

theology similar to the Social Gospel movement in

the West. He criticized conservative intellectuals for

compromising the moral claims of the Gospels, and

advocated unification of the Roman Catholic and

Russian Orthodox churches. Soloviev’s enthusias-

tic ecumenism provoked a nationalist backlash,

which in turn led to his Christian critique of na-

tionalism (The National Question in Russia, 2 vols.,

1888, 1891). Soloviev went on to produce a wide-

ranging ethical treatise, The Justification of the Good

(1897), in which he provided an overall theory as

well as practical discussion of such issues as na-

tionalism, capitalism, and war. He also contributed

to the development of a liberal philosophy of law

in Russia.

In the year of his untimely death at age forty-

seven, Soloviev published Three Conversations on

War, Progress, and the End of History, a controver-

sial work of fiction that questioned the efficacy of

human action in an evil world. The work concluded

with “The Short Tale of the Anti-Christ,” a futur-

istic story about the end of the world. Some schol-

ars argue that Soloviev here rejected his liberal

theology, but others contend that the central mean-

ing of the story is consistent with his earlier work,

because a unified, truly ecumenical humanity tri-

umphs.

A uniquely independent thinker during his life,

Soloviev had great influence after his death. His the-

ology inspired social activism among some Ortho-

dox clergy, a trend cut short by the Bolshevik

Revolution. His philosophy paved the way for Or-

thodox thinkers like Sergei Bulgakov and Pavel Flo-

rensky. His mystical poetry inspired symbolists like

Alexander Blok and Andrei Bely. And after the So-

viet Union came to an end, many Russians returned

to Soloviev as a guidepost for creating a new Rus-

sian philosophy.

See also: BELY, ANDREI; BLOK, ALEXANDER ALEXAN-

DROVICH; BULGAKOV, SERGEI NIKOLAYEVICH; ORTHO-

DOXY; SILVER AGE

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Copleston, Frederic C. (1986). Philosophy in Russia: From

Herzen to Berdyaev. Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame

University Press.

Gaut, Greg. (1998). “Can a Christian Be a Nationalist?

Vladimir Soloviev’s Critique of Nationalism.” Slavic

Review 57:77–94.

Groberg, Kristi A. (1992). “The Feminine Occult Sophia in

the Russian Religious Renaissance: A Bibliographic Es-

say.” Canadian-American Slavic Studies. 26:197–240.

Kline, George L. (1985). “Russian Religious Thought.” In

Nineteenth Century Religious Thought in the West. Vol.

SOLOVIEV, VLADIMIR SERGEYEVICH

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

2, ed. Ninian Smart. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge

University Press.

Kornblatt, Judith, and Gustafson, Richard, eds. (1996).

Russian Religious Thought. Madison: University of

Wisconsin Press.

Sutton, Jonathan. (1988). The Religious Philosophy of

Vladimir Soloviev: Towards a Reassessment. New York:

St. Martin’s Press.

Walicki, Andrzej. (1987). Legal Philosophies of Russian

Liberalism. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

REG

AUT

SOLOVKI ISLAND See GULAG.

SOLOVKI MONASTERY

Located on the Solovki Archipelago in the White

Sea, the Solovki (Solovetsk) monastery was

founded between 1429 and 1436 by the hermits

Savaty and German, followed by the monk and fu-

ture abbot Zosima. By the early sixteenth century,

Savaty and Zosima had become the patron saints

of the White Sea region. Solovki, also a garrison,

was one of Russia’s most important cloisters with

extensive territories, earning income from trade,

salt, fishing, and rents. Metropolitan Phillip II of

Moscow contributed significantly to Solovki’s ar-

chitectural development while serving as abbot

(1546–1566). Its monastic rule, formulated in the

late sixteenth or early seventeenth century, became

a template for later communities.

Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich’s troops besieged

Solovki from 1668 to 1676 in a conflict tradition-

ally linked to Old Belief. Solovki’s leaders and a large

part of the brotherhood first accepted, then rejected,

Patriarch Nikon’s liturgical reforms. However, re-

bellion against central authority combined religious

concerns with anti-Moscow sentiment fostered by

political exiles imprisoned at Solovki. After their de-

feat, many monks left, ultimately to swell the

number of trans-Volga elders—hermits who served

as spiritual fathers to disaffected Orthodox com-

munities.

Solovki remained an active monastery and pop-

ular pilgrimage site until the October Revolution,

after which the Soviet government transformed it

into a military training camp. It became a labor

camp in the 1920s and 1930s for political prison-

ers. Abandoned soon afterward, Solovki was re-

opened as a museum in the 1970s, then closed

again until the end of Soviet rule, when it was re-

opened to the public.

See also: KIRILL-BELOOZERO MONASTERY; MONASTICISM;

OLD BELIEVERS; SIMONOV MONASTERY; TRINITY ST.

SERGIUS MONASTERY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Michels, Georg. (1992). “The Solovki Uprising: Religion

and Revolt in Northern Russia.” Russian Review

51:1–15.

Spock, Jennifer B. (1999). “The Solovki Monastery,

1460–1645: Piety and Patronage in the Early Mod-

ern Russian North.” Ph.D. diss. Yale University.

ENNIFER

B. S

POCK

SOLZHENITSYN, ALEXANDER ISAYEVICH

(b. 1918), Nobel Laureate for Literature, one of the

most prominent Soviet dissidents of the late 1960s

and early 1970s.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn was born in the south-

ern resort town of Kislovodsk. His father, a tsarist

officer, died before his birth, and he was raised by

his mother in Rostov-On-Don. He studied math and

physics at Rostov University and was married

in 1940 to his first wife, Natalia Reshetovskaya.

Solzhenitsyn served as an artillery officer in the Red

Army during World War II and was arrested by

the secret police in February 1945 for criticizing

Josef Stalin in his personal correspondence.

Solzhenitsyn was sentenced to eight years,

which he served in a number of facilities, includ-

ing a sharashka (a special scientific installation/

prison) and a labor camp in Kazakhstan. He was

released from the camp system in February 1953,

and then was sent into enforced internal exile in

rural Kazakhstan, where he taught high school.

Solzhenitsyn was diagnosed and treated for cancer

during this period. He also reconciled with his wife,

from whom he was divorced during his imprison-

ment. He was allowed to move to Ryazan, where

he taught physics, after his conviction was over-

turned in 1957.

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ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF

IVAN DENISOVICH

Solzhenitsyn burst abruptly onto the national and

international stages in November 1962, with the

publication of his novella One Day in the Life of Ivan

Denisovich, in the journal Novy mir (New World).

This deceptively simple novella describes a normal

day in the life of a prisoner in a Soviet forced-

labor camp in the early 1950s. It was the first work

he had submitted for publication, though he had

been writing for thirty years. Novy mir’s chief ed-

itor, Andrei Tvardovsky, passed the story on to one

of Nikita Khrushchev’s aides. Khrushchev, who had

started a second round of de-Stalinization in 1961,

personally approved its publication, which would

have been impossible otherwise.

The publication of Ivan Denisovich caused a sen-

sation. Although millions of Soviet citizens had

been released from the camps or internal exile in

the late 1950s, the topic had never been discussed

publicly. The novella immediately sold out several

press-runs totaling almost a million copies, pro-

voking widespread discussion. Many liberal Soviet

intellectuals hoped, in vain, that its appearance pre-

saged a further loosening of artistic controls. It was

also translated into numerous foreign languages

and held up as a triumph of Soviet art. The

combination of the novella’s content and artistic

quality made Solzhenitsyn an internationally rec-

ognized writer. He published several short stories

in the months that followed, all in Novy mir.

SOLZHENITSYN AS A DISSIDENT

The ten years after 1963 saw a rapid deteriora-

tion of the relationship between Solzhenitsyn and

the Soviet leadership, devolving into open hostil-

ity by 1969. A crackdown against outspoken

writers began in late 1963 and intensified greatly

after Khrushchev was ousted from power in 1964.

In this new environment, Solzhenitsyn was un-

able to publish anything, including two new semi-

autobiographical novels: The First Circle, based on

his sharashka experiences, and Cancer Ward, both

of which were highly critical of the Soviet sys-

tem. Their publication, even in revised form, was

blocked by Party hardliners, who instead tried to

coerce Solzhenitsyn to write more positive works

about the Soviet Union.

In the meantime, some of Solzhenitsyn’s works

began to circulate in samizdat, and a few were pub-

lished abroad without his permission. These devel-

opments, along with the accidental discovery by

the KGB of some of his most critical writings in

1965, led to a hardening of official attitudes to-

wards Solzhenitsyn. In 1967, Solzhenitsyn at-

tacked the powerful Union of Soviet Writers,

criticizing it for persecuting writers on behalf of

the state, instead of protecting their artistic free-

dom. Solzhenitsyn’s approval of the foreign publi-

cation of Cancer Ward, The First Circle, and other

works, created further friction. Party and state

officials responded by launching an escalating cam-

paign of harassment, slander, and threats, includ-

ing his expulsion from the Writers’ Union in 1969.

Although Solzhenitsyn was part of a larger

dissident movement of the 1960s and 1970s, he

was unique in a number of ways. His international

prominence, which only grew after he was awarded

the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970, protected

him from arrest, and allowed him to be more con-

frontational in his actions than most other dissi-

dents. It also allowed him access to Western

reporters.

SOLZHENITSYN, ALEXANDER ISAYEVICH

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Alexander Solzhenitsyn holds his first press conference in the

West after being expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974.

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Solzhenitsyn also had his own unique political

agenda. While most Soviet dissidents focused on the

need for basic human rights, by the early 1970s

Solzhenitsyn began to focus on the issue of moral-

ity. He believed that the Russian people could only

be saved by a rejection of Bolshevik ideas and the

resurrection of what he considered a unique set of

moral values developed in Russia over centuries

under the influence of Orthodox Christianity. He

looked to pre-Revolutionary Russia for guidance,

not to the West; indeed, he believed that these Rus-

sian spiritual values could save the West as well.

Solzhenitsyn criticized Western culture for its

decadence and argued it was weakening the United

States to the point where it would soon no longer

be able to stand up to the communist threat. He

denounced the policy of détente, saying that the

Soviet Union was using the process to take advan-

tage of the United States’ weakness. Solzhenitsyn’s

religiously tinged nationalism was similar to that

of the nineteenth-century Slavophile movement.

Although hinted at in interviews, Solzhenitsyn’s

philosophical opinions only became widely known

after his arrival in the West in 1974.

THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO

In the mid-1960s, Solzhenitsyn began work on a

project titled The Gulag Archipelago. The title referred

to the extensive system of prisons and forced-

labor camps that had begun shortly after 1917 and

expanded dramatically under Stalin; the term Gu-

lag was the Russian acronym for the Main Direc-

torate for Camps. The book, which Solzhenitsyn

termed “an experiment in literary investigation,”

was based on his own experiences and those of over

two hundred former prisoners. This epic work

eventually ran to three large volumes. Although

the manuscript was completed and copies smug-

gled to the West in 1968, Solzhenitsyn delayed its

publication abroad until the end of 1973, when his

hand was forced by the KGB’s seizure of a manu-

script copy.

The Gulag Archipelago was by far Solzhenit-

syn’s most damning work on the Soviet system. It

described, in horrifying detail, the ordeal that pris-

oners underwent, from arrest through life in the

camps, including the systematic use of torture and

attempts to dehumanize prisoners. It also argued

that the organized use of state terror was an inte-

gral part of Soviet communism from the start, and

that Stalin only expanded the system created by

Vladimir Lenin. Solzhenitsyn predicted, correctly,

that the appearance of this work would intensify

state actions against him; he was arrested and ex-

pelled from the Soviet Union shortly after its pub-

lication in the West.

The publication of the Gulag Archipelago’s first

volume had a huge impact outside the Soviet bloc,

particularly in Europe and the United States, where

it sold millions of copies. It is widely considered to

have done more than any other single book to

shatter Western illusions about the nature of the

Soviet dictatorship. The term Gulag entered wide-

spread use in many languages. The book’s influ-

ence was particularly strong in France, where many

intellectuals had remained sympathetic to Soviet

communism until its publication. The book’s im-

pact was heightened by its presentation, which

mixed fiery rhetoric with literary skills, separating

it from standard historical writings. Appropriately,

Solzhenitsyn used his profits from the project to

aid the families of jailed Soviet dissidents.

Many readers were overwhelmed by the book’s

size, however, and sales of the next two volumes

were considerably lower. Although some of

Solzhenitsyn’s specific facts and details are now

contested, the Gulag Archipelago remains one of the

definitive works on the Soviet prison system.

EXILE AND RETURN

In February 1974 Solzhenitsyn was arrested,

charged with treason, stripped of his Soviet citi-

zenship, and expelled to West Germany. Party lead-

ers believed that exiling Solzhenitsyn would be less

damaging to their international reputation than

sending him to prison. His second wife, Natalia

Svetlova, and their sons were allowed to follow him

a short time later. After a brief period in Europe,

Solzhenitsyn moved to the United States, settling

in Vermont.

After a tumultuous reception, Western sym-

pathies towards Solzhenitsyn cooled after he artic-

ulated his moral philosophy in a series of articles

and lectures, which concluded with his 1978 Grad-

uation Address at Harvard. His attacks on Western

culture alienated many, and he eventually with-

drew into self-imposed seclusion in Vermont,

where he worked on his Red Wheel series of nov-

els. Solzhenitsyn also engaged in heated polemics

with members of the dissident and emigré com-

munities who disagreed with his views and tactics.

In 1989 Solzhenitsyn’s writings began to ap-

pear in the Soviet Union, starting with The Gulag

SOLZHENITSYN, ALEXANDER ISAYEVICH

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

Archipelago. Although he published some additional

articles in the Soviet press, his absence from the

scene limited his influence during the period of

transition. Solzhenitsyn finally returned to Russia,

amid great publicity, in 1994. Upon his return, he

had a short-lived television talk show (1994–1995)

and published several books. His didactic style has

limited his audience, however, and he has had rel-

atively little influence on Russian society since his

return. Solzhenitsyn continues writing; one of his

works, Dvesti let vmeste (Two Hundred Years

Together, 2000), revived old accusations of anti-

Semitism, charges which Solzhenitsyn and many

observers reject as false.

See also: DISSIDENT MOVEMENT; GULAG; NATIONALISM

IN THE ARTS; NOVY MIR; SAMIZDAT; SLAVOPHILES;

UNION OF SOVIET WRITERS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Pearce, Joseph. (1999). A Soul in Exile. London: Harper-

Collins.

Remnick, David. (1997). Resurrection: The Struggle for a

New Russia. New York: Random House.

Scammell, Michael. (1984). Solzhenitsyn: A Biography.

New York: Norton.

Scammell, Michael, ed. and intro. (1995). The Solzhenit-

syn Files, tr. Catherine A. Fitzpatrick et. al. Chicago:

Edition.

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander Isaevich. (1963). One Day in the

Life of Ivan Denisovich, tr. Ralph Parker. New York:

Dutton.

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander Isaevich. (1968). Cancer Ward,

tr. Nicholas Bethell and David Burg. New York: Far-

rar, Straus and Giroux.

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander Isaevich. (1968). The First Circle,

tr. Thomas P. Whitney. New York: Harper & Row.

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander Isaevich. (1974–1978). The Gu-

lag Archipelago. 3 vols., tr. Thomas P. Whitney (vol.

1–2), H. T. Willets (vol. 3). New York: Harper &

Row.

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander Isaevich. (1980). East and West.

New York: Harper Perennial.

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander Isaevich. (1980). The Oak and the

Calf: A Memoir, tr. Harry Willetts. New York: Harper

& Row.

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander Isaevich. (1995). The Russian

Question at the End of the Twentieth Century, tr. Yer-

molai Solzhenitsyn. New York: Farrar, Straus and

Giroux.

Thomas, D. M. (1998). Alexander Solzhenitsyn: A Century

in His Life. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

RIAN

ASSOF

SOPHIA

(1657–1704); regent to Tsars Ivan V and Peter I,

1682–1689.

The fifth daughter of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich

and his first wife Maria Miloslavskaya, Sophia

spent her youth in the terem, where her freedom

was restricted, but she also came into contact with

the new cultural trends of Tsar Alexei’s later years.

Many historians describe her as a pupil of Simeon

Polotsky, but, although she was literate, there is

no hard evidence that she studied with him. Those

who regard Sophia as ambitious believe that she

prepared for power during the reign of her brother

Tsar Fyodor (r. 1676–1682) by attending his sick-

bed and making political alliances, notably with

Prince Vasily Golitsyn, whose lover she is said to

have became. However, evidence of an intimate re-

lationship, which would have seriously breached

Muscovite moral codes, rests mainly on hearsay

and rumor, as do Sophia’s early political ambitions.

Following Fyodor’s death in 1682, in the ab-

sence of mature males of royal blood, Sophia en-

tered the political arena, as Muscovite conventions

allowed royal women to do. She was motivated by

the decision to make her half-brother Peter (b.

1672) sole ruler in preference to the elder, but phys-

ically and mentally handicapped, Tsarevich Ivan (b.

1666). Exploiting the Moscow militia’s (muske-

teers’) action to air grievances and take revenge on

unpopular officers and officials in Peter’s govern-

ment, in May 1682 Sophia and her party were able

to secure Ivan’s accession as joint tsar with Peter.

Most historians refer to Sophia as regent to her

brothers, although she was never formally ap-

pointed as such. Even so, she was widely regarded

as ruler and consolidated her authority by suc-

cessfully quelling the continuation of musketeer

unrest in 1682 during the period known as the

Khovanshchina. She began to add her name to those

of her brothers in royal edicts and to take part in

public ceremonies and receptions, discarding some

of the restrictions of the terem.

The dual monarchy required a new configura-

tion of power at court in order to defuse tensions

and achieve a consensus. Many additional men

were promoted to boyar status. The ascendancy of

the Miloslavsky clan was marginal, and by the late

1680s they lost ground to Peter’s maternal rela-

tives the Naryshkins and their clients. Sophia re-

lied on Prince Vasily Golitsyn to spearhead both her

foreign and her domestic policy, although later the

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

secretary Fyodor Shaklovity rose to prominence.

The regime’s crowning achievement was the 1686

treaty with Poland, which ratified the Treaty of An-

drusovo (1667) in return for Russia’s agreement to

sever relations with the Ottoman empire and enter

the Holy League, a stepping-stone toward Russia’s

ascendancy over Poland, achieved later in Peter I’s

reign. At home, efforts continued to maximize the

fulfillment of service requirements and the pay-

ment of tax liabilities and to maintain law and or-

der. Mildness in some areas, for example banning

the cruel practice of burying alive women who

murdered their husbands, was offset by savage

penalties against Old Believers (edict of 1685). At

the same time, developments in foreign policy

forced the regime to relax restrictions on non-Or-

thodox foreigners, which annoyed conservatives.

Russia offered sanctuary from persecution to

French Protestants and made concessions to foreign

merchants and industrialists to encourage them to

set up businesses. In 1689 commercial treaties were

signed with Prussia. Russia’s first institute of

higher education, the Slavo-Greco-Latin Academy,

founded in 1685, also relied on foreign teachers.

Like many powerful women, Sophia has been

accused of Machiavellian tendencies. Although

there is no evidence that she intended Peter harm,

she did adopt a highly visible rulership profile and

began to use the feminine form of the title “auto-

crat” (samoderzhitsa). She sponsored an impressive

building program in the fashionable Moscow

Baroque style and had her portrait with crown,

orb, and scepter painted and reproduced in prints.

Poets praised her, playing on the associations of her

name (Sophia the Holy Wisdom). All this fueled

fears that she planned to be crowned and spawned

rumors of plots against Peter and his mother. Ul-

timately, her regime was undermined by the fail-

ure of two military campaigns against the Crimea

in 1687 and 1689, leading to a standoff provoked

by Peter’s supporters. This time the musketeers’

support for Sophia was lukewarm and did not quell

her opponents. Some of her supporters were exe-

cuted, and Sophia herself was banished to a convent.

In 1698 the musketeers rebelled again. Rumors cir-

culated that Sophia was the instigator, but the ev-

idence was inconclusive. Nevertheless, Peter forced

her to take the veil under the name Susannah. She

died in the Novodevichy convent in Moscow in

1704.

See also: FYODOR ALEXEYEVICH; GOLITSYN, VASILY

VASILIEVICH; IVAN V; PETER I; STRELTSY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hughes, Lindsey. (1988). “’Ambitious and Daring Above

her Sex’: Tsarevna Sophia Alekseevna (1657–1704)

in Foreigners’ Accounts.” Oxford Slavonic Papers 21:

65–89.

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

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

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

Symbolism and Royal Women of Muscovite Russia.

DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press.

INDSEY

UGHES

SORGE, RICHARD

(1895–1944), Soviet spy.

Richard Sorge was born to a German family in

Baku. His father was a petroleum engineer and his

grandfather, Friedrich Sorge (1828–1906), a col-

SORGE, RICHARD

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

Portrait of Regent Sophia Alexeyevna by Ilya Repin. © A

RCHIVO

CONOGRAFICO

, S.A./CORBIS

league of Marx. In 1910 the family returned to Ger-

many, where Sorge later studied in Berlin and

Hamburg Universities. Drafted into the German

army, he was a participant in World War I, and

the combat experience converted him to socialism.

In 1919 he joined the Communist Party of Ger-

many. He held various positions as teacher and

miner before returning to the Soviet Union in 1924,

where a year later he joined the Communist Party

and worked for various institutions before joining

the military intelligence (GRU) in 1929. His duties

took him to London and Los Angeles, and in 1930

to China. Returning to Germany, he established

contacts with the military intelligence and Gestapo

and was sent undercover as a journalist to Tokyo,

and eventually as the press attaché in the German

embassy. His scandalous life, which included heavy

drinking and several affairs, served as a cover for

his activities as a Soviet agent. The German mili-

tary attaché was the source of much information,

and through him, Sorge found out the plans for

Operation Barbarrossa and duly informed Moscow.

This news went counter to Josef Stalin’s belief, who

did not anticipate war in 1941, and he even thought

Sorge was a double agent. Beria also discounted

similar reports from his own agents in Germany,

which confirmed Sorge’s warnings. The end result

was the greatest military disaster to befall the

Soviet Union, when Hitler attacked as Sorge had

reported. In his work, Sorge received help from the

Japanese communists and from his radio operator,

Max Klausen (1899–1979). Born in Germany,

Klausen immigrated to the Soviet Union in 1927

and a year later joined the military intelligence. Af-

ter serving in China, he was sent to Japan in Sep-

tember 1935, where he joined up with Sorge. Like

Sorge, he was arrested in 1941, but he survived

and lived in East Germany.

Sorge’s loose life finally brought him to the at-

tention of the Japanese counterintelligence, which

arrested him in October 1941. After two years in

prison, Sorge was sentenced to death on Septem-

ber 29, 1943, and was hanged. There is no evidence

that the Soviet government in any way intervened

in his behalf, and in fact, Sorge’s long-suffering

wife, E. A. Maximova (1909–1943), was arrested

(September 4, 1942) by the NKVD and perished in

prison camp. Only during Nikita Khrushchev’s Thaw

were Sorge’s services to the Soviet Union recog-

nized, and on November 11, 1962, he was posthu-

mously awarded the title of hero of the Soviet

Union, and his wife was rehabilitated. Sorge’s life

has been subject of numerous books, but his legacy

remains that of one of the greatest intelligence

coups of all time gone to waste because those in

the position of power failed to heed it.

See also: MILITARY INTELLIGENTSIA; STATE SECURITY, OR-

GANS OF; WORLD WAR II

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Johnson, Chalmers. (1990). An Instance of Treason: Ozaki

Hotsumi and the Tokyo Spy Ring. Stanford, CA: Stan-

ford University Press.

Whymant, Robert. (1996). Stalin’s Spy: Richard Sorge and

the Tokyo Spy Ring. London: I. B. Tauris.

ICHAEL

ARRISH

SOROKOUST

The sorokoust, or forty divine liturgies (i.e., eu-

charistic services), is a series of orthodox liturgical

commemorations celebrated in memory of a dead

person.

The number forty derives from the Orthodox

tradition that it takes the soul forty days to reach

the throne of God. Because of the similarity in sound,

it is sometimes thought that the term is connected

to the Russian sorok, “forty,” and usta, “month,” but

in fact it derives from the Middle Greek sarakoste,

“forty” (ancient Greek thessarakoste). The forty

liturgies are part of the standard Orthodox ritual for

the dead, corresponding genetically and functionally

to the Catholic tricenarius, or thirty masses. A tale

from the Dialogues of Pope Gregory the Great (590–

604) about the helpfulness of the thirty masses for

the souls of the departed (bk. IV, chap. 57) appears

in Greek and Russian manuscripts with the number

changed to forty. The first Old Russian sources that

mention the sorokoust date from twelfth-century

Novgorod. Canonical texts decry the practice of ar-

ranging for sorokousty in advance of a person’s death

or even of celebrating them while the person is still

alive. Last wills and testaments from Muscovite

Russia frequently provide for comparatively small

donations to be distributed by the departed’s ex-

ecutor to as many as forty churches where sorok-

ousty were to be celebrated for the departed. A more

limited version of the sorokoust, a commemoration

in the regular liturgy for forty days, is still prac-

ticed in the early twenty-first century in Russian

Orthodox churches.

See also: ORTHODOXY; RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH;

SINODIK

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Steindorff, Ludwig. (1994). Memoria in Altrußland.

Stuttgart: Steiner.

UDWIG

TEINDORFF

SOSKOVETS, OLEG NIKOLAYEVICH

(b. 1949), industrialist, inventor, powerful minis-

ter in the Russian government from 1993 to 1996.

Trained as a metallurgical engineer, from 1971

until 1991 Oleg Soskovets worked at the Karaganda

Metallurgical Factory in Kazakhstan, rising from

the shop floor to become the general director in

1988. In 1991 a police investigation of financial

abuses led to the arrest of several of his colleagues,

but he himself was not prosecuted.

In 1989 he was elected to the newly formed

USSR Congress of People’s Deputies, and in 1991

he served briefly as minister of metallurgy in the

USSR government. In January 1992 President Boris

Yeltsin named him to head a state metallurgy com-

mission, but that spring he was made deputy prime

minister and minister of industry in the govern-

ment of Kazakhstan. Again, he left after a few

months, when the attorney general’s office re-

opened the factory corruption case.

Named to head a state committee on metal-

lurgy, Soskovets returned to Moscow in October

1992, only for Yeltsin five months later to appoint

him deputy prime minister and overseer of Russian

industry. He became close to Yeltsin’s security aide

Alexander Korzhakov and Prime Minister Viktor

Chernomyrdin, and chaired government meetings

in the latter’s absence. He was a hawk on the first

Chechnya war, and in February 1995 Yeltsin sent

him to Chechnya with the thankless task of restor-

ing economic and social life in the still war-torn re-

public. Later, unanswered allegations suggested

that he had profited handsomely from the govern-

ment cash sent to Chechnya for reconstruction.

Over time, Korzhakov started pressing Yeltsin

to replace Chernomyrdin with Soskovets. In Janu-

ary 1996 Yeltsin named him to head the campaign

for Yeltsin’s reelection. However, Soskovets and

Korzhakov favored postponement of the election,

fearing that Yeltsin might lose. Eventually forced

into a runoff, Yeltsin fired them both in June.

After this, Soskovets became an assistant to

Mayor Yuri Luzhkov of Moscow and continued his

work for the Association of Financial-Industrial

Groups, of which he became chairman in 1995.

Press and TV exposés linked him to allegedly crim-

inal activity by the Mafia-connected brothers

Mikhail and Lev Chernoi, colleagues of his in the

metals industry. Although he made no effective re-

sponse to the charges, he was not prosecuted.

See also: KORZHAKOV, ALEXANDER VASILIEVICH; YELTSIN,

BORIS NIKOLAYEVICH

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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.

ETER

EDDAWAY

SOSLOVIE

By the mid-nineteenth century, the term soslovie

(pl. sosloviya) had come to designate hereditary

groups such as the nobility, clergy, townspeople,

and peasantry. Although soslovie is often regarded

as the Russian equivalent to West European terms

(the English estate, the French état, and the German

Stand), it differed from these in several important

respects.

Above all, the term appeared quite belatedly—

in its modern sense only in the early nineteenth

century. In contrast to medieval Europe, where es-

tates had long been the basis of the social hierar-

chy, medieval Muscovy knew nothing similar—in

language or social reality—to the corporate estates

of Western Europe. Instead, just as the Muscovite

state had “gathered in” principalities and lands, so

too had it accumulated but not amalgamated dis-

parate status groups based on occupation, residence,

and ethnicity. Indeed, one lexicon of Muscovite lan-

guage recorded nearly five hundred status groups.

Although Muscovy sometimes used generic terms

like chin (rank) to designate elite groups and bifur-

cated society into “service” (sluzhilye) and tax-bear-

ing (tiaglye) categories, it recognized the distinct

status of individual groups. Characteristically, even

the nobility lacked a collective name; the service

people (sluzhilye liudi) remained kaleidoscopic: elite

princely clans and aristocratic boyars at the apex,

with marginal, interstitial groups such as single-

homesteaders (odnodvortsy) and musketeers (streltsy)

at the bottom. The peasantry, similarly, consisted

of various groups, from serfs and indentured slaves

to crown and state peasants.

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Desperate to mobilize human resources, the

eighteenth-century state sought to simplify this so-

cial order. One key impulse came from Peter the

Great’s new poll tax, which forced the state to

identify the specific subgroups of the privileged and

to merge the numerous categories of the disprivi-

leged. Amalgamation was first apparent in collec-

tive terms for the privileged nobility, initially as

shlyakhetstvo (a Polish loanword) and by mid-

century as dvoryanstvo, the modern term. From the

1760s, chiefly in an effort to transplant West Eu-

ropean models of an urban third estate, some offi-

cials groped for a new terminology, but did not

settle upon a generic term to describe and aggre-

gate the smaller social units.

Only in the first decades of the nineteenth cen-

tury did the term soslovie finally emerge in its mod-

ern sense. The word had earlier denoted “gathering”

or “assembly,” but nothing so abstract as corpo-

rate estate. In the early nineteenth century, how-

ever, the term soslovie came to signify not only

formal institutions (such as the Senate), but also

corporate social groups. Although other, compet-

ing terms still existed (such as zvanie and sostoianie

to designate occupation and status groups), the

term soslovie became—in law, state policy, and ed-

ucated parlance—the fundamental category to de-

scribe huge social aggregates such as the nobility.

The new terminology gained formal recognition in

a new edition (1847) of the Academy dictionary of

the Russian language, which defined soslovie as “a

category of people with a special occupation, dis-

tinguished from others by their special rights and

obligations.”

The term not only persisted, but conveyed ex-

traordinary intensity and complexity. Soslovie was

more than a mere juridical category; it signified a

group so hermetically sealed, so united by kinship

and culture that some lexicographers invoked the

word caste (kasta) as a synonym. The estate sys-

tem, moreover, proved highly adaptable: New sta-

tus groups—privileged subgroups (i.e., merchants),

ethnic groups (i.e., Jews), and new professions (i.e.,

doctors)—became distinct sosloviya. The prolifera-

tion of estates reflected the regime’s desire to fit

other groups into the existing soslovie order, as well

as the ambition of these groups to gain formal le-

gal status. Hence the complex of Russian sosloviya

was far more differentiated and protean than a sim-

plistic four-estate paradigm would suggest.

The soslovie system reached its apogee, in le-

gal recognition, lexical clarity, and social reality, in

the mid-nineteenth century, but it was increasingly

subject to erosion and challenge. In part, the regime

itself—which had celebrated the soslovie as a bul-

wark of social stability against the revolutionary

forces sweeping Western Europe—concluded that

some social mobility and change was essential for

the country’s development and power. To be sure,

the Great Reforms of the 1860s made the inclusion

of all estates (vsesoslovnost) a fundamental princi-

ple; the reforms sought not to abolish estates but

to mobilize them all, whether for supporting new

institutions (e.g., the organs of local self-govern-

ment) or for supplying soldiers and officers for the

army. But the emergence of revolutionary move-

ments increased the regime’s concern about social

stability and, especially from the 1880s, inspired

much rhetoric and some measures to reaffirm the

soslovie order.

At the same time, modernizing processes like

urbanization and industrialization were steadily

eroding the soslovie boundaries. Rapid economic

growth, in particular, had a critical, corrosive im-

pact: the plethora of new professions and semi-

professions, together with the rapid growth of the

industrial labor force, undermined the significance

of the estate marker. Not that the soslovie was ir-

relevant; it was still the only category in passports,

it was often correlated with opportunity and oc-

cupation, and it bore connotations of prestige or

stigma. Nevertheless, social identities became

blurred and confused; profession and property, not

estate origin, became increasingly important in

defining status and identity.

As a result, by the early twentieth century, the

distinctive feature of Russian society was the amor-

phousness and fluidity of social identities. In con-

trast to the traditional Western paradigm (“estates

into classes”), Russian society exhibited a complex

of “estates and classes,” with mixed and overlap-

ping identities. The government itself, with its fran-

chise laws and policies in the wake of the 1905

Revolution, came increasingly to count upon prop-

erty, not hereditary status, in allocating electoral

power and defining its social base. The privileged,

such as conservative nobles, fought to preserve the

soslovie order; the propertied and progressive

deemed abolition of sosloviya a precondition for the

creation of a modern civil society. Although the

Bolshevik regime on October 28, 1917, dissolved

all estate distinctions (one of its first acts), it did

not in fact dispense with this category as it en-

deavored to identify adversaries. Hence personnel

documents, from university applications to judicial

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records, regularly required information about the

prerevolutionary soslovie status—an unwitting

testimony to the enduring significance ascribed to

soslovie in the formation of social identities.

See also: ALEXANDER II; ALEXANDER III; CLASS SYSTEM;

GREAT REFORMS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Freeze, Gregory L. (1986). “The Soslovie (Estate) Paradigm

and Russian Social History.” American Historical Re-

view 91:11–36.

Wirtschafter, Elise K. (1997). Social Identity in Imperial

Russia. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press.

REGORY

L. F

REEZE

SOUL TAX

The soul tax (podushnaya podat) was a capitation

or poll tax levied on peasant communes and some

urban inhabitants according to the number of

males of all ages, as estimated by the periodic cen-

suses (revizy) that began in 1718. Enacted by Peter

the Great by decree on January 11, 1722, the poll

tax was intended to maintain the armed forces in

the peasants’ vicinity. For example, the support of

an infantry soldier required payments from about

thirty-six “souls.” During the Muscovite and early

Petrine period there were numerous exemptions to

the land and household (dvor) taxes, but by the

mid-eighteenth century all peasants, whether pri-

vate, state, or church, were supposed to pay around

eighty kopeks. The latter two categories of enserfed

peasants also paid rent (obrok) of 1.5 (later, 2)

rubles, as well as some dues in kind. They could be

drafted for work on roads and canals, for example.

The rates of money taxation differed consider-

ably depending on the class of taxpayer. Court, ec-

clesiastical, and state peasants, including free

settlers (odnodvortsy), were supposed to pay about

four times the rate for private serfs; merchants and

burghers paid somewhat less—about triple the rate

for private serfs. Nobles, officials, and clergy were

exempt from the poll tax.

At first the soul tax was collected by military

units directly. Subsequently the serf owners had to

collect the tax for their private serfs, and district

administrators collected it for state or church serfs

in their jurisdiction. Landowners collected the soul

tax even though it would have been more in their

interest to raise rents instead. Since some males

were either too young or too old to have income,

the head of household had to pay for everyone.

While the soul tax appeared to be per head, the

village commune often distributed the burden on

an ability-to-pay basis. The rate of tax per male

soul, however, was fixed, as increases were con-

sidered politically dangerous, so higher yields came

mainly from population growth. Efforts were

made at each census, or revisia, to reduce the tax-

exempt population. All “idling” and “free” persons

were included, as well as peasants of many kinds,

including bondsmen (kholopi). The revenue from

tax and rents, however, failed to cover the cost of

the standing army during peacetime, not to men-

tion the great expenditures of the Northern War,

which may have actually reduced the taxable pop-

ulation. Owing to the tax and labor burdens im-

posed on them, then as well as later on, many

peasants fled to the borderlands and across the

frontier.

The soul tax had obvious administrative ad-

vantages over the previous household tax. Under

the new system, young men could not avoid pay-

ing tax simply by postponing their departure from

the ancestral home, as they could under the house-

hold tax. Nor could peasants combine nuclear fam-

ilies into one extended household for the purpose

of avoiding tax.

Russian historians of an earlier era considered

the poll tax an increased burden on peasant house-

holds, but this seems unlikely, since the apex of war

expenses and innovative kinds of taxes was reached

in the years 1705 to 1715. For most serfs the mon-

etary liability (as distinct from taxes in kind) under

the poll tax appears to have been slightly lower than

under the household tax. Furthermore, because the

poll tax was the same regardless of the amount of

land cultivated, there was an incentive to increase

arable land at the expense of waste, and, in fact, the

amount of cultivated land did increase during this

period. That the poll tax is remembered as harsh is

explained by the poor grain harvests of the time,

which required peasants to buy food at high prices.

After Peter’s death in 1725 the poll tax rate was

lowered to seventy-four, then seventy kopeks, but

during Catherine II’s reign it was raised to one ru-

ble. The highly destructive Napoleonic Wars saw a

further increase to two, then three rubles. The poll

tax was eliminated between 1883 and 1886, but

land taxes and redemption payments continued to

the end of the empire.

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