Encyclopedia of Russian History

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.

coming through the city, despite the presence of

Russian, Tatar, Persian, Transcaucasian, and Cen-

tral Asian merchants. Both Contarini and Afanasy

Nikitin, the latter a Russian merchant from Tver

who traveled to India via Astrakhan sometime be-

tween 1468 and 1471, noted instability in the

steppe near Astrakhan, general danger, and exces-

sive tariffs (more properly, extortion payments)

imposed on merchants. However, their travel

through the khanate shows that while the trans-

Volga-Caspian-Central Asian trade may have de-

clined, because of the ideal location of the city of

Astrakhan at key crossroads, international com-

merce continued to function. Although the volume

and frequency of this trade is difficult to determine,

Contarini relates that “a great many Tartar mer-

chants” traveled in a caravan to Muscovy along

with an annual embassy sent by the Astrakhan

khans and brought along with them Iranian silks

and fustian that they exchanged for furs, saddles,

swords, bridles, and other items. With Ivan IV’s

(r. 1533–1584) conquest and incorporation of the

Astrakhan Khanate into Muscovy in 1556, coupled

with his annexation of the Kazan Khanate in 1552,

the entire course of the Volga with its Astrakhan

link into the Caspian Sea came under Moscow’s di-

rect control. Thereafter, trade via Astrakhan as well

as Muscovite commerce with Persia, Central Asia,

China, and India flourished.

See also: CRIMEAN KHANATE; GOLDEN HORDE; NOGAI

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Barbaro, Josafa, and Contarini, Ambrogio. (1873). Trav-

els to Tana and Persia, ed. Henry E. J. Stanley; tr.

William Thomas and S. A. Roy. Hakluyt Society Se-

ries no. 49. London: Hakluyt Society.

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

the Turkic Peoples. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.

OMAN

K. K

OVALEV

ATOMIC ENERGY

The Soviet Union had an extensive atomic energy

program. The program included the use of isotopes

as tracers for agricultural research and as ionizing

sources for food irradiation, extensive applications

in medicine, so-called peaceful nuclear explosions,

and an ambitious effort to build scores of reactors

to produce electrical energy. Under the regime of

Josef Stalin, the military side of atomic energy was

significantly more developed than its civilian ap-

plication. Scientists and workers were gathered into

closed cities to build the first Soviet atomic bomb,

detonated in 1949, and to design and assemble tens

of thousands of nuclear warheads. It is not certain

what percentage of the nuclear program was civil-

ian and what percentage was

military, but it is clear that the military needs pre-

dominated during the Cold War. It is also difficult

to draw a line between military and civilian pro-

grams. Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev

made the peaceful atom a centerpiece of their eco-

nomic development programs. The peaceful atom

found expression in art and music, on stamps and

lapel pins, and even in literary works. For instance,

the Exhibition of the Achievements of the Socialist

Economy (VDNKh) had a large hall devoted to

atomic energy. However, even when the technol-

ogy was ostensibly dedicated to peaceful goals,

there were often military interests at stake as well.

For example, Soviet scientists conducted 120 peace-

ful nuclear explosions (PNEs) for excavation, dam

construction, and other purposes that were con-

nected with the 1963 ban against atmospheric test-

ing of nuclear devices.

COLD WAR DEVELOPMENTS

Atomic energy was a prominent fixture of the Cold

War, as part of competition with the United States

for military superiority and for economic and ide-

ological influence. In a propaganda coup in 1954,

Soviet officials announced the opening of the Ob-

ninsk five-thousand kilowatt reactor, the first

station to provide electrical energy for peaceful pur-

poses (it remained open and operational until

2002). Over the next three decades, each subsequent

Soviet achievement received extensive media cover-

age. Soviet scientists actively participated in the

Geneva Conferences on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic

Energy. The first, in 1956, enabled Soviet physi-

cists to appear as equals of their American and Eu-

ropean counterparts.

The conferences were crucial in allowing Soviet

physicists to participate in the broader scientific

community, an opportunity that had been denied

them during the Stalin era because of its extreme

commitment to secrecy. At conferences, scientists

from the USSR could enter into serious discussions

with their international colleagues, and these in-

teractions often eased Cold War tensions. For in-

stance, Igor Kurchatov, the head of the atomic

bomb project, spent the last years of his life pro-

moting peaceful nuclear programs and sought a

test ban treaty of some sort.

ATOMIC ENERGY

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

DEVELOPMENT OF

NUCLEAR REACTORS

Soviet engineers developed five major kinds of nu-

clear reactors. One design focused on compactness,

and was intended to be used for propulsion, espe-

cially for submarines. The USSR also employed

compact reactors on aircraft carriers, container

ships, freighters, and icebreakers, such as the ice-

breaker Lenin, which was launched in 1959. Scien-

tists also worked on reactor propulsion for rockets

and jets, and nuclear power packs for satellites.

There were several prototype land-based models,

including the TES-3, built in Obninsk, that could

be moved on railroad flatbed cars or on tank treads.

In the 1990s, Russian nuclear engineers designed a

barge-based, floating nuclear unit for use in the Far

North and Far East.

There was also an extensive breeder reactor

program. The most common type was the liquid

metal fast breeder reactor (LMFBR). Breeder reactors

are so called because they use “fast” neutrons from

fissile uranium (U235) to transmute non-fissile

U238 into plutonium (Pu239). The plutonium

can then be used to power other breeder reactors,

or as fuel for nuclear weapons. Breeder reactors are

highly complex. They have a liquid metal, usually

sodium, coolant, which must be kept separate from

the water used for power generation, because the

sodium will burst into flame when mixed with

water.

The physicists A. I. Leipunsky and O. D.

Kazachkovsky established the LMFBR program in

1949, over the years building a series of increas-

ingly powerful experimental reactors. In the late

1960s, they built the BOR-60 with the hope that

it would double (or breed) plutonium every eight

years. Like its predecessors and subsequent models,

the BR-60 had an extended operational lifespan, but

also required long periods of repair time because of

pump breakdowns, ruptured fuel assemblies,

sodium leaks, and fires.

Leipunsky and Kazachko were determined to

build industrial prototype reactors as well. In 1979

they built the BN-350 on the Mangyshlak Penin-

sula on the shore of the Caspian Sea. The reactor

ATOMIC ENERGY

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

Workers monitor an experiment at the Akademgorodok nuclear physics laboratory in 1966. © D

EAN

ONGER

/CORBIS

provided both electrical energy and desalinated

120,000 cubic meters of water daily for the bur-

geoning petrochemical industry. At Beloiarsk they

built a 600 megawatt model (the BN-600), fol-

lowed by an 800 megawatt model (the BN-800),

and aimed to create a network of 1,600 megawatt

LMFBRs that would be capable of producing plu-

tonium sufficient for all military and civilian ends.

Cost overruns and accidents left the program weak-

ened, however.

OTHER ACHIEVEMENTS

AND PROBLEMS

The mainstay of the Soviet (and Russian) atomic

energy effort has been the development of 440 and

1,000 megawatt pressurized water reactors,

known by the Russian designation as VVER reac-

tors. Also important were the channel-graphite re-

actors (RMBK in Russian), such as the one built at

Chernobyl. The USSR supported the diffusion of

VVERs beyond its borders, especially into Eastern

Europe (Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria),

and two 1,500 MW RMBKs in Lithuania. The

VVERs have been largely reliable by Soviet stan-

dards, although the first generation facilities lack

any containment buildings or other safety equip-

ment that has become standard in the West.

Reactors had to include more expensive con-

tainment design features if they were to be com-

petitive in Western markets, as when the USSR sold

its VVER-440s to Finland. In an effort to reduce

costs, speed construction, and limit chances for

worker error in the field, the nuclear industry built

the Atommash Factory in Volgodonsk on the lower

Volga River. Atommash was intended to construct

eight reactor pressure vessels and associated equip-

ment annually by 1983. The massive factory re-

quired the investment of millions of rubles and

employed tens of thousands of workers. Yet it

never operated as intended, producing only three

vessels in all before one wall of the main foundry

collapsed.

RMBKs have been even more problematic. Ana-

toly Alexandrov, later the president of the Academy

of Sciences and Kurchatov’s successor, pushed the

RMBK reactor. Their advantages are that they

continue to operate during constant refueling, the-

oretically could be built in sizes up to 2,400

megawatts (forecast, not built), and produce plu-

tonium, which is coveted by military planners. Yet

they use ordinary factory structures and have no

containment whatsoever. On the other hand, they

have suffered from premature aging. Worse still,

the RBMK is highly unstable at low power, an in-

herent fault that contributed to the Chernobyl dis-

aster. The flagship of the RBMK is the Leningrad

station, with four units built between 1973 and

1984. In 2002 the Ministry of Atomic Energy (Mi-

nAtom) announced plans to attempt to prolong the

operational lives of these four reactors and to build

another two units on the site. This continues the

Soviet practice of building reactors in close prox-

imity to populated areas and industrial centers in

so-called parks that have been designed to share

equipment and thus to keep costs down.

Initially, the public enthusiastically embraced

atomic energy as a symbol of Soviet scientific

prowess and cultural achievement. However, the

inherent weaknesses of the RBMK and the dangers

of the mindset of Soviet engineers who believed in

the perfectibility of their technology and the desir-

ability of unlimited reactor construction became

painfully clear at Chernobyl in April 1986. As a re-

sult of an experiment that was poorly designed and

even more poorly carried out, the Chernobyl facil-

ity’s unit four (of four operating, with six others

planned) exploded, spewing roughly 120 million

curies of radioactivity into the atmosphere. This led

to a fire that killed thirty-one firefighters outright,

and required the evacuation of all people within a

thirty-kilometer radius of the station. Soviet offi-

cials hesitated to announce the extent of the crisis

at Chernobyl for several days after the event. This

hesitation revealed that Mikhail Gorbachev himself

was unsure how far to pursue his policy of glas-

nost (“openness”) and seriously damaged the pub-

lic image of the atomic energy program.

A major research program centered on con-

trolled thermonuclear synthesis, or fusion. Andrei

Sakharov and Igor Tamm developed the idea for the

electromagnetic containment of a plasma in a

toroid-shaped reactor at millions of degrees tem-

perature. The plasma would fuse two lighter ele-

ments into a heavier one, releasing tremendous

amounts of energy that could then be used to gen-

erate electricity. This model has come to be known

throughout the world by its Russian name, toka-

mak, and has been the most successful fusion de-

vice developed by the end of the twentieth century.

Soviet scientists remained world leaders in this field,

with programs at institutes in Leningrad, Kharkiv,

Akademgorodok, Moscow, and elsewhere. Cost ef-

ficiency has been a problem however. Since the

program commenced in the early 1950s, it has yet

to achieve the break-even point where the cost

tooperate fusion devices has been offset by the

ATOMIC ENERGY

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

returns gained through energy production. In 1985,

Mikhail Gorbachev suggested a Soviet-American al-

liance in fusion research to President Ronald Rea-

gan at their Geneva summit.

PROGRAM LEGACIES

One of the legacies of atomic energy in the USSR

has been the production of thousands of tons and

millions of gallons of high- and low-level radioac-

tive waste. The waste has been stored haphazardly,

often in open areas, and for a number of years the

Soviets dumped waste, including spent reactor ves-

sels, into the world’s oceans. The waste has been

spreading throughout the world’s ecosystems for

decades. There have been a series of disasters con-

nected with waste disposal, including the explosion

of a waste dump at Kyshtym in 1957, a disaster

at Lake Karachai in 1953, and several others. As of

2002, Russia faced financial and technical difficul-

ties in complying with international agreements re-

garding the disposal of radioactive waste and in

destroying obsolete military equipment such as de-

commissioned nuclear submarines. The human and

environmental costs of the Soviet atomic energy

program thus remain extremely high. In spite of

this, the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy has

established plans to expand the nuclear enterprise

significantly by the year 2020, with the construc-

tion of up to forty additional reactors and the dif-

fusion of floating nuclear power stations.

See also: CHERNOBYL; COLD WAR

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Holloway, David. (1994) Stalin and the Bomb. New Haven,

CT: Yale University Press.

Josephson, Paul. (1999). Red Atom. New York: Freeman.

Medvedev, Zhores. The Legacy of Chernobyl. New York:

Norton.

AUL

R. J

OSEPHSON

AUGUST 1991 PUTSCH

The August 1991 Putsch (August 19–August 21)

was a hard-line communist attempt to overthrow

Mikhail Gorbachev, triggering the collapse of the

USSR.

On the morning of August 19, 1991, Soviet

state television suddenly and ominously switched

to playing classical music, a programming change

that usually preceded a significant political an-

nouncement. Soviet vice president Gennady Yanayev

issued a statement that President Mikhail Gor-

bachev had been removed for health reasons and

that he, as vice president, was now acting presi-

dent. In reality, Gorbachev was under house arrest

at his vacation home in Foros. Yanayev and seven

other hard-line communists, under the rubric of

the State Committee for the State of Emergency,

had seized power to prevent a major reorganiza-

tion of the Soviet Union.

Gorbachev’s policies of glasnost, democratiza-

tion, and perestroika had set in motion a process of

reconfiguring the relationship between the central

party-state and the fifteen constituent republics of

the USSR. Glasnost, for example, had resulted in the

publication of the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact’s

secret protocols, revealing that Estonia, Latvia, and

Lithuania had been illegally annexed by Moscow.

While these three republics sought outright inde-

pendence from the Soviet Union, other republics is-

sued decrees announcing their intent to take more

control over their local political and economic af-

fairs. This parade-of-sovereignties gained momen-

tum when Boris Yeltsin declared the sovereignty of

the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RS-

FSR) in June 1990.

Gorbachev and the Communist Party initially

tried to control the restructuring process. On April

26, 1990, the Supreme Soviet adopted the law, “On

the Delineation of Powers Between the USSR and

the Subjects of the Federation,” to redefined center-

periphery relations. The newly established Federa-

tion Council, consisting of Gorbachev and leaders

of the fifteen republics, announced on June 12,

1990, that a completely new union treaty was

needed to clarify the changing authority structure

of the country. Four separate Union treaties were

drafted in 1990 and 1991. Critically, Gorbachev

primarily negotiated with the elected presidents of

the republics, not the republic Party leaders, a move

that would alarm die-hard communists in the

months to come. Gorbachev’s two closest allies in

the reform process, Eduard Shevardnadze and

Alexander Yakovlev, began to warn that a reac-

tionary coup was imminent.

After many rounds of negotiation and a pop-

ular referendum, a final draft was issued on June

17, 1991, and a signing ceremony was announced

for August 20. The treaty created a Union of So-

viet Sovereign Republics and tacitly acknowledged

that the six republics absent from the negotiations

AUGUST 1991 PUTSCH

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

(Armenia, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, and

Moldova) were free to enter or decline this new po-

litical union. Gorbachev departed for vacation in

the Crimea on August 4.

However, key Soviet leaders feared the new

treaty would mean the end of the great Soviet

state—and their own power. Plans had already been

drawn up and were implemented once Gorbachev

had left Moscow. The plotters’ “Appeal to the So-

viet People” was full of warnings about the immi-

nent demise of the USSR, and court documents and

testimony have since revealed that the desire to pre-

serve the Union was a direct precipitant of the coup.

The eight-man Emergency Committee represented

the traditional bastions of power in the Soviet sys-

tem. They included: Gennady Yanayev (USSR vice

president), Valentin Pavlov (prime minister),

Vladimir Kryuchkov (head of the KGB), Dimitri Ya-

zov (minister of defense), Boris Pugo (minister of

interior), Alexander Tizyakov (head of the Associ-

ation of State Enterprises), Oleg Baklanov (head of

the military-industrial complex and deputy chair

of the Defense Council), and Vasil Starodubsev

(chair of the Soviet farmers’ union). Although

Yanayev was the reluctant public face of the Com-

mittee, Kryuchkov was the real architect. Key lead-

ers such as parliamentary speaker Anatoly

Lukyanov and Gorbachev’s long-time chief of staff

Valery Boldin supported the Committee, although

they were not formal members. In the end, the coup

was thwarted by its planners’ incompetence, pop-

ular resistance, and Russian Republic (RSFSR) pres-

ident Boris Yeltsin.

On Monday, August 19, the Emergency Com-

mittee dispatched troops to key positions around

Moscow, shut down all independent media out-

posts, banned all non-Communist political organi-

zations, and proclaimed a state of emergency. They

failed to shut off telephones, e-mail, and fax ma-

chines, however, and the independent media merely

went underground.

Inexplicably, the Emergency Committee did not

arrest Boris Yeltsin, who had become the popularly

elected president of the Russian Republic only two

months earlier. Yeltsin, at his dacha outside

Moscow, was soon joined by key leaders of Rus-

sia, including Prime Minister Ivan Silayev, parlia-

mentary speaker Ruslan Khasbulatov, Leningrad

mayor Anatoly Sobchak, Moscow deputy mayor

Yuri Luzhkov, and General Konstantin Kobets,

chair of the Russian parliament’s military affairs

committee.

The Russian leaders drafted their own appeal,

“To the Citizens of Russia,” and then dispersed. Al-

though the KGB’s elite Alpha unit had surrounded

the dacha, they did not move to arrest Yeltsin and

company. In hindsight, participants have attrib-

uted this critical error to internal bickering among

Alpha commanders or the lack of a direct order

from the Emergency Committee. Whatever the ex-

planation, Yeltsin slipped away and immediately

went to the Russian parliament building, known

as the White House. Climbing atop one of the tanks

surrounding the White House, Yeltsin denounced

the coup as illegal, read his appeal, and called for

a general strike. He also declared that military and

police forces on Russian territory now reported to

him. Yeltsin’s team began circulating alternative

news reports, faxing them out to Western media

for broadcast back into the USSR. Soon Muscovites

began to heed Yeltsin’s call to defend democracy.

AUGUST 1991 PUTSCH

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

A soldier stands guard on a tank in Red Square as the coup

begins to collapse. © P

ETER

URNLEY

/CORBIS

Tens of thousands of Russian citizens assem-

bled outside the White House, constructing barri-

cades out of trees, trolley cars, building materials,

even old bathtubs, to hold off an expected attack

by Soviet troops. But instead of attacking on Mon-

day, troops from the Tamanskaya Division switched

sides to defend the White House, turning their tur-

rets away from the building.

Outside Moscow, the reaction was mixed.

Many local leaders hastened to support the Emer-

gency Committee. Republics with noncommunist

leaders, such as Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova,

and Kyrgyzstan, immediately denounced the coup.

Iraq and Libya backed the plotters, while Western

leaders cautiously observed events unfold. United

States diplomats had issued three separate coup

warnings to Gorbachev that summer, but President

George H. W. Bush was initially reluctant to back

the maverick Yeltsin.

That evening, Acting President Yanayev held a

press conference that was a public-relations disas-

ter. His quivering hands, constant sniffling, and

stilted delivery suggested his lack of conviction—

or his inebriation. Reporters laughed at his lame

answers about the day’s events. From the outset,

the Emergency Committee inspired little fear.

On Tuesday, August 20, citizens continued to

gather at the White House. Students, private secu-

rity firms, priests, and grandmothers defended the

building, organized by veterans of the Afghanistan

war. Yeltsin emerged to rally the crowd. Waving

Russia’s pre-communist flag, he exhorted citizens

to ignore decrees from the Emergency Committee.

Members of the Russian and Western media entered

the White House and provided eyewitness reports.

Some 250 RSFSR Supreme Soviet deputies alter-

nately holed up with Yeltsin or went into the

crowds to convert Soviet soldiers to their cause.

Pro-democracy figures such as Eduard Shevard-

nadze, Yelena Bonner, and Mstislav Rostropovich

addressed the crowd.

Defying a curfew and drenching rain, people

stayed at the barricades Tuesday night. When

troops began to stir just after midnight, the crowds

tried to halt them, shouting “Shame! Shame!” Three

civilians, Volodya Usov, Dima Komar, and Ilya

AUGUST 1991 PUTSCH

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

Boris Yeltsin rallies Muscovites to resist the hard-line coup attempt in August 1991. © P

ETER

URNLEY

/CORBIS

Krichevsky, were killed in the confusion, becoming

the coup’s martyrs. No further advance was made

on the White House, as military and KGB troops

refused to fire on their countrymen.

The Emergency Committee effectively surren-

dered at 10:00

. on Wednesday, August 21. As

the troops withdrew, two competing delegations

raced to reach Gorbachev first. One group, con-

sisting of Baklanov, Kryuchkov, Tizyakov, and Ya-

zov, primarily wanted to plead their case to

Gorbachev and avoid arrest. Yeltsin’s group, led by

Russian vice president Alexander Rutskoi and Prime

Minister Silayev, wanted to assure Gorbachev’s

safety. They took Western media and Russian se-

curity forces with them. Yeltsin’s team arrived

first, and Gorbachev had the other group arrested

immediately upon arrival. Gorbachev and his fam-

ily flew back to Moscow, arriving in the early

hours of Thursday. However, the people had sided

with Yeltsin, not Gorbachev, and power began to

shift accordingly.

Gorbachev was slow to read the new mood

among his populace. He believed a new union treaty

was still possible, praised Lenin and socialism upon

his return, and hesitated to resign from the Com-

munist Party. Meanwhile, people took to the

streets, tearing down statues of Lenin, hammers

and sickles, and even the statue of Felix Dzerzhin-

sky outside KGB headquarters, the organization he

had founded. Lenin’s Mausoleum closed indefi-

nitely. At an August 23 session of the Russian par-

liament, members jeered at Gorbachev, then forced

him to fire his entire cabinet. Yeltsin compelled a

stunned Gorbachev to read aloud the minutes of an

August 19 meeting of the coup plotters. Yeltsin

then banned the Party from Russian territory. On

August 24, Gorbachev resigned as Party general

secretary, turned its assets over to parliament, and

curbed its activities in the dwindling USSR.

Ukraine, Belarus, Estonia, and Latvia declared their

independence, followed by Moldova.

Seven members of the Emergency Committee

were arrested immediately following the coup’s

collapse. Interior Minister Pugo committed suicide.

In the immediate aftermath of the putsch, staff at

the Central Committee headquarters destroyed

thousands of documents. The Russian Duma

amnestied the plotters in February 1994, and sev-

eral were elected to that institution.

The degree of Gorbachev’s complicity in the

putsch remains a source of controversy. The KGB

placed him under arrest on Sunday evening, Au-

gust 18, after he refused to resign. Gorbachev in-

sists that he was isolated, betrayed, and fearful for

his life. Lukyanov and Yanayev, however, insist

that Gorbachev was in on the plans from the be-

ginning and merely waiting to gauge popular re-

action. History is still being written on this key

event in Russian politics.

See also: GORBACHEV, MIKHAIL SERGEYEVICH; KRYUCH-

KOV, VLADIMIR ALEXANDROVICH; PUGO, BORIS

KARLOVICH; UNION TREATY; YAZOV, DMITRY TIMO-

FEYEVICH; YELTSIN, BORIS NIKOLAYEVICH

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Billington, James. (1992). Russia Transformed: Break-

through to Hope, Moscow, August 1991. New York:

Free Press.

Dunlop, John B. (1993). The Rise of Russia and the Fall

of the Soviet Empire. Princeton: Princeton University

Press.

Gorbachev, Mikhail. (1991). The August Coup: The Truth

and the Lessons. New York: Harper Collins.

Remnick, David. (1993). Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of

the Soviet Empire. New York: Random House.

Yeltsin, Boris. (1994). The Struggle for Russia. New York:

Random House.

E. R

OBERTSON

AUSTERLITZ, BATTLE OF

The Battle of Austerlitz, which occurred on De-

cember 2, 1805, was the climactic battle of the War

of the Third Coalition (August–December 1805).

Having forced an Austrian army to surrender at

Ulm in September, Napoleon then chased the Russ-

ian army of Mikhail Ilarionovich Kutuzov from the

Austrian border on the River Inn to Moravia. There

Kutuzov’s army linked up with reinforcements

from Russia and Tsar Alexander I joined his troops.

Also known as the Battle of the Three Emperors,

because Napoleon, Emperor Franz of Austria, and

Alexander I were all present on the field, Austerlitz

was a crushing French victory that sealed the fate

of the Third Coalition (Russia, Austria, Great Britain,

Naples, and Sweden).

Napoleon’s forces were inferior to those of the

coalition, so the French emperor developed a ruse.

Having initially seized the dominant Pratzen

Heights in the middle of the battlefield, he with-

drew from that position, feigning weakness, in or-

der to entice the allies to attack his right flank.

When they did so, Napoleon’s forces retook the

AUSTERLITZ, BATTLE OF

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

Pratzen Heights, where Kutuzov and Alexander

himself urged their troops to resist, and then sur-

rounded the remnants of the allied army, inflicting

approximately 30 percent casualties on the Russ-

ian and Austrian troops.

The victory was so one-sided that Alexander

withdrew his army from the campaign altogether,

retreating rapidly back to Russian Poland. His de-

parture compelled Emperor Franz to sue for peace,

resulting in the lopsided Treaty of Pressburg

(1806), that formally ended the war and dissolved

the coalition. Although little studied by Russians

and Austrians (for reasons of national pride),

Austerlitz elsewhere became the paradigm of deci-

sive battles in the nineteenth century, and generals

across the continent and even in the United States

sought to emulate Napoleon’s accomplishment.

See also: ALEXANDER I; KUTUZOV, MIKHAIL ILARIONOVICH;

NAPOLEON I

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bowden, Scott. (1997). Napoleon and Austerlitz : An Un-

precedentedly Detailed Combat Study of Napoleon’s Epic

Ulm-Austerlitz campaigns of 1805. Chicago: Emperor’s

Press.

Duffy, Christopher. (1999). Austerlitz, 1805. London:

Cassell.

REDERICK

W. K

AGAN

AUSTRIA, RELATIONS WITH

As they gained control of the Russian lands during

the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the princes of

Moscow became a factor in international relations.

An Austrian nobleman, Sigismund von Herber-

stein, twice led embassies from the Habsburg Holy

Roman emperor to Basil III (1505–1533) in

Moscow. Herberstein’s Rerum moscoviticarum com-

mentarii (Notes on Muscovite Affairs, 1549) helped

shape European attitudes to Russia for generations.

More sustained relations between Austria and Rus-

sia began during the reign of Peter the Great

(1689–1725), who made the Russian Empire a per-

manent force in the European balance of power.

Austria maintained an alliance with Russia for

most of the eighteenth century, because its rival,

France, was seeking aid from Russia’s neighbors

Poland and Turkey. Austria and Russia prevented

Stanislaw Leszczynski, a French-supported candi-

date to the Polish throne, from unseating the Saxon

dynasty in the War of the Polish Succession

(1733–1735). Russia supported Maria Theresa’s

claim to the inheritance of her father, Emperor

Charles VI, in the War of the Austrian Succession

(1740–1748) and the Seven Year’s War (1756–1763).

Austria and Russia joined with Prussia in the

First Partition of Poland (1772), a cynical but ef-

fective attempt to preserve regional equilibrium by

compensating the three powers at Poland’s expense.

Austria then supported Empress Catherine II’s

ambitions in the Balkans, but, concerned by the

threat of the French Revolution, withdrew from the

war with Turkey in 1791. While Austria was pre-

occupied with France, Russia and Prussia cooper-

ated in the Second Partition of Poland (1793), but

Austria joined them in the Third Partition follow-

ing Kosciuszko’s revolt (1795).

During the Revolutionary and Napoleonic

Wars, Russia and Austria were allies in the War of

the Second Coalition (1798–1801, Russia withdrew

in 1799) and the War of the Third Coalition

(1805–1807). French victories forced Austria to make

an alliance with Napoleon, sending troops to join

his invasion of Russia in 1812. When the invasion

failed, however, Austria joined Russia, Prussia, and

Great Britain in the final coalition that defeated

Napoleon in 1814 and occupied Paris.

Following the Congress of Vienna (1815), Aus-

tria signed Alexander I’s Holy Alliance, and the two

states generally cooperated to support the conser-

vative order and prevent revolution. Nicholas I

(1825–1855) sent a Russian army to help Austria

defeat the Hungarian bid for independence in 1849.

This was poorly repaid by Austria’s malevolent

neutrality during the Crimean War (1853–1856).

After the unification of Italy and Germany,

Austria turned its ambitions exclusively to the

Balkans, where it clashed with Russia. The Balkan

crises in 1875 to 1878 and in 1885 destroyed Otto

von Bismarck’s Three Emperors’ League. Subse-

quent Austro-Russian success at keeping the

Balkans “on ice” ended after Russia’s disastrous war

with Japan in 1904 to 1905. As Russia turned from

the Far East to a more active Balkan policy, Aus-

tria in 1908 annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina (oc-

cupied since the Congress of Berlin in 1878), leaving

Serbia bitter and Russia humiliated. Russia re-

sponded by encouraging Balkan cooperation to

thwart further Austrian penetration, but instead

the Balkan League turned on Turkey in two wars

in 1912 and 1913. At the peace conference in Lon-

AUSTRIA, RELATIONS WITH

100

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

don in 1913, Austria blocked Serbian access to the

Adriatic, again to Russia’s chagrin.

This accumulation of tension set the stage for

the assassination of the Austrian archduke Francis

Ferdinand in Sarajevo in June 1914, touching off

World War I. Austria was determined to punish

Serbia for the assassination. Russia’s support for

Serbia drew in Germany, Austria’s ally. The Ger-

man war plan called for an attack on France,

Russia’s ally since the 1890s, before Russia could

mobilize. The attack, through neutral Belgium,

provoked Great Britain’s entry. During the war, the

Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires both col-

lapsed.

The empire’s diminished successor, the Repub-

lic of Austria, and the Soviet Union did not enjoy

significant relations between the wars. Absorbed

into Hitler’s Germany in 1938, Austria regained its

independence after World War II because the Allies

had decided in 1943 to treat it as liberated, not en-

emy, territory. Nevertheless, Austria was occupied

in four zones, with Vienna, also divided, located in

the Soviet zone. On the fault line of the developing

Cold War, Austria emerged united, neutral, and free

of Soviet domination when the State Treaty was

signed in 1955. Vienna was often a site for inter-

national meetings, such as the summit between

Nikita S. Khrushchev and John F. Kennedy in 1961,

prior to the Berlin and Cuban crises. Austria’s en-

try into the European Union ended its neutrality

and placed its relations with Russia on a new foot-

ing as part of Russia’s relationship with the EU.

See also: BALKAN WARS; COLD WAR; CRIMEAN WAR;

POLAND; SEVEN YEARS’ WAR; THREE EMPERORS’

LEAGUE; VIENNA, CONGRESS OF; WORLD WAR I

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Allard, Sven. (1970). Russia and the Austrian State Treaty:

A Case Study of Soviet Policy in Europe. University

Park: Pennsylvania State University.

Bridge, F. R. (1990). The Habsburg Monarchy Among the

Great Powers, 1815–1918. New York: Berg.

Jelavich, Barbara. (1974). St. Petersburg and Moscow:

Tsarist and Soviet Foreign Policy, 1814–1974. Bloom-

ington: Indiana University Press.

Jelavich, Barbara. (1991). Russia’s Balkan Entanglements,

1806–1914. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University

Press.

Poe, Marshall. (2000). A People Born to Slavery: Russia in

Early Modern European Ethnography, 1476–1748.

Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Rossos, Andrew. (1981). Russia and the Balkans: Inter-

Balkan Rivalries and Russian Foreign Policy, 1908–1914.

Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

UGH

AINE

GNEW

AUTOCRACY

Autocracy was the form of government in Russia

until 1905 when, in theory, a constitutional monar-

chy was established. The Russian autocratic order

can date its origins to the rise of Moscow during the

Mongol occupation. The official conception of the

autocracy stressed that all political power and legit-

imacy emanated from the autocrat, who claimed to

be God’s representative on earth. According to Rus-

sia’s Fundamental Laws of 1832, “The All-Russian

Emperor is an autocratic and unlimited monarch.”

He had the ability to overcome society more easily

than most of his counterparts to the west of Russia

simply because the tenets of autocratic thought did

not accept the notion that the monarch should con-

sult social groups or other forms of organized soci-

etal elements, and institutional constraints on

monarchical power did not exist.

One of the justifications for autocracy was its

perceived position as being above all classes. It was

portrayed as the ideal arbiter between the various

self-interested groups in society, ensuring that ex-

ploitation did not take place between them and im-

plementing supreme truth and justice. In addition,

autocracy was stressed as Russia’s prime and

unique historical force, pushing the country to-

wards greatness and providing for national unity

in a multi-ethnic empire and internal stability. The

emergence of Russia as an empire and a great Eu-

ropean power symbolized for many the autoc-

racy’s achievements.

At the base of autocratic ideology was the idea

of a strong union between the people and the au-

tocratic tsar, whose paternalistic image was

stressed. While carrying the title of autocrat, he

was also known as the “little father” who protected

his people from the bureaucracy and worked for

their ultimate benefit. There is considerable debate

over the extent to which the Soviet political sys-

tem, and specifically Stalinism, was rooted in this

heritage of autocracy.

The autocracy was dependent on the character

and modus operandi of the autocrat. As the co-

ordinating pivot of the entire system, he determined

AUTOCRACY

101

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

the autocracy’s actions and reactions. If the auto-

crat failed to ensure a degree of harmony and unity

among the highest servants of the state, or could

not fulfil this role and refused to support a minis-

ter to act as the coordinating point of the govern-

ment, he contributed greatly to disorder and

paralysis within the autocracy. This scenario was

played out during the reign of the last emperor,

Nicholas II.

The educated upper classes did not believe that

the autocracy was without some constraints.

These, however, were not legal, but moral, and

based on history, culture, religion, and tradition.

From the beginning of the nineteenth century, de-

bate over the future of autocracy increased. The

Decembrist Revolt of 1825 was the first sign of

open dissatisfaction with autocracy. Forced to em-

bark on a policy of modernization in the middle of

the nineteenth century, the autocracy struggled to

deal with its consequences. By the end of the nine-

teenth century, the autocracy was seem more as

an obstacle than a positive force. After the Revolu-

tion of 1905, the tsar was still called autocratic,

but a parliamentary system now existed. Autoc-

racy’s ultimate failure to incorporate to any suffi-

cient degree the greatly enlarged educated and

working classes, a step which would have in the-

ory put an end to autocracy, became of the major

causes of the collapse of the monarchy.

See also: DECEMBRIST MOVEMENT AND REBELLION; LIB-

ERALISM; REVOLUTION OF 1905; TOTALITARIANISM;

TSAR, TSARINA

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dukes, Paul. (1982). The Making of Russian Absolutism

1613–1801. London: Routledge.

McDaniel, Tim. (1988). Autocracy, Capitalism, and Revo-

lution in Russia. Berkeley: University of California

Press.

Rogger, Hans. (1992). Russia in the Age of Modernisation

and Revolution, 1881–1917. London: Routledge.

Verner, Andrew. (1990). The Crisis of Russian Autocracy:

Nicholas II and the 1905 Revolution. Princeton, NJ:

Princeton University Press.

HAND

P. S

HAKIBI

AVARS

The Avars are one of the many people of the Dages-

tan Republic of the Russian Federation. Numbering

496,077 within Dagestan at the 1989 Soviet cen-

sus, they formed 28 percent of this republic’s pop-

ulation. This made them the largest ethnic group

in Dagestan (the Dargins were second, with 15.8

percent), but still far from a majority. There were

a total of 600,989 Avars in the Soviet Union in

1989. Of this total, 97 percent spoke Avar as their

first language. Nearly 61 percent, a significant

number of the adults, claimed fluency in Russian

as a second language.

The Avar language is a member of the Avaro-

Andi-Dido group of the Northeast Caucasian fam-

ily of languages. In Soviet times this would have

made the them a part of the larger Ibero-Caucasian

family, a classification now seen as a remnant of

Soviet druzhba narodov politics. It is written in a

modified Cyrillic alphabet that was introduced in

1937. A Latin alphabet had been used previously,

from 1928 to 1937. Before that an Arabic script

was used. A modest number of books have been

published in Avar. From 1984 to 1985, fifty-eight

titles were published. Being without their own

eponymous ethnic jurisdiction, the Avars were less

privileged in this category than the Abkhaz, for ex-

ample, whose jurisdiction was the Abkhazian So-

viet Socialist Republic (ASSR). With only one-sixth

of the population of the Avars, the Abkhazians

nonetheless published some 149 books in their lan-

guage in the same period.

The most prominent leader of Caucasian resis-

tance against the encroachment of the Russian Em-

pire in the nineteenth century was an Avar man

named Shamil. Curiously, his power base was cen-

tered not among his own people, but among the

Chechens immediately to the west.

In the delicate multiethnic balance of Dagestani

politics, the Avars have occupied a preeminent, if

not a dominant, status, especially in the post-So-

viet period. The Avar language is often spoken by

members of other ethnic groups within the Dages-

tan Republic as a means of gaining access to power

structures. One of the disputes in Dagestan involves

the Chechens. Part of the Chechen Republic’s terri-

tory that had been absorbed by Dagestan after the

Chechen deportation in 1944 was never returned.

Avars occupied some of this territory, and the re-

turn of Chechens seeking their land has resulted in

ongoing conflict.

The ethnogenesis of the Avars is often linked

to the people of the same name who appeared with

the Hunnic invasions of late antiquity. These Avars

original from East Central Asia with other Turkic-

AVARS

102

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY