Encyclopedia of Russian History

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reaucratized, socialized network of state and coop-

erative outlets, and an equally vast underground

trade.

In subsequent decades, the black market re-

flected the general condition of the economy.

Through the early 1950s, staple foods, clothes, and

other necessities predominated. World War II

marked the zenith of this tendency, as the urban

population was forced to sell off surplus posses-

sions on the black market in order to purchase sup-

plementary food. As survival-threatening crises

receded, the array of goods sold on the black mar-

ket widened to reflect the rising expectations of So-

viet consumers. By the 1980s, observers noted the

prevalence of such items as automobile spare parts,

imported blue jeans, rock-and-roll records, and

home decor. Foreign currency (especially U.S. dol-

lars) was also the object of black-market transactions

throughout the postwar period, with underground

exchange rates for foreign bills greatly exceeding

the official rate.

Three factors complicate assessments of the

black market. First, a black market by definition

eludes data collection and reporting. Quantitative

estimates of its aggregate role in the Soviet econ-

omy thus necessarily remain speculative.

Second, the Soviet Union’s unstable legal envi-

ronment makes it difficult to track changes over

time. The basic juridical rubric for the black mar-

ket was speculation (buying and reselling goods

with the intention of making a profit), which was

outlawed in every Soviet criminal code. It was ap-

plied sparingly and rather arbitrarily during the

New Economic Policy, but Josef Stalin’s renewed

assault on the private sector in the late 1920s cre-

ated pressures for a formal redefinition. The law of

August 22, 1932, mandated a five-year labor-camp

sentence for speculation, including petty sales, but

it failed to standardize prosecution, which exhib-

ited the campaign character (extreme fluctuations

in prosecution rates) typical of the criminal justice

system as a whole. The law was finally softened

in 1957 through the redefinition of petty specula-

tion as a noncriminal offense, and then through

the reduced prison sentence for criminal specula-

tion in the 1960 RSFSR Criminal Code.

Third, the black market’s parameters are

blurred by the fact that some private transactions

remained legal. Through at least the 1950s, most

black-market sales took place at outdoor markets

or bazaars. The primary function of these venues,

from an official point of view, was to enable farm-

ers to sell surplus produce after all delivery oblig-

ations had been met. Their secondary function,

however, was to provide a space where any citi-

zens could hawk used clothes and surplus posses-

sions, and where registered artisans could sell

certain kinds of handmade goods. These transac-

tions, which eventually came to include the private

provision of services, included many shadings of

legality. Aron Katsenelinboigen accordingly argued

that the Soviet economy should be thought of in

terms of a spectrum of colored markets, and not

just black versus red.

In sum, the black market was a product of reg-

ulated prices, shortages, and geographical dispari-

ties in the availability of goods, as well as a legal

system that criminalized most private transactions.

See also: SECOND ECONOMY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Katsenelinboigen, Aron. (1977). “Coloured Markets in the

Soviet Union.” Soviet Studies 29(1):62–85.

ULIE

ESSLER

BLACK REPARTITION

To Russian peasants, black repartition (cherny pere-

del) meant the long-anticipated seizure and redis-

tribution of all nonpeasant lands (those held by the

gentry, townspeople, the Crown, etc.) by and

among the peasants who lived near them. Most

peasants desired such a land settlement and exer-

cised it whenever government power weakened,

giving them the opportunity. Examples of black

repartitions abound in the revolutions of 1905–1906

and especially in 1917–1918. Peasants placed so

much priority on seizure of land and permanent

expulsion of nonpeasants from the countryside

that they often destroyed valuable farm equipment,

animals, and buildings in the process.

The term was also claimed by a short-lived

Russian Populist revolutionary group, Land and

Freedom, the first Populist group, which appeared

in the wake of the 1873–1874 Going to the People

movement. In October 1879 it foundered on doc-

trinal issues and broke into two groups. The larger

one, called People’s Will, focused on a revolution-

ary terror campaign to bring down the autocracy

and spark a socialist revolution. The smaller group,

Black Repartition, preferred a path of gradualism

BLACK REPARTITION

153

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

and propaganda to develop a revolutionary con-

sciousness among the people. Just as hostile to the

autocracy as People’s Will, Black Repartition did not

think that a terror campaign could succeed, because

merely changing political institutions (if that were

possible) would mean nothing without an accom-

panying social revolution.

Black Repartition’s doubts were proved right

when the People’s Will terror campaign, culminat-

ing in the assassination of Emperor Alexander II on

March 1 1881, led not to a revolution but instead

to popular revulsion toward and severe police re-

pression of all revolutionary groups. These included

Black Repartition, which fell apart in Russia as most

of its members were arrested and its printing press

seized. By the autumn of 1881, Black Repartition

had ceased to exist in Russia. Only a few leaders

(Georgy Plekhanov, Vera Zasulich, and Pavel Ax-

elrod) escaped abroad to Switzerland. There Black

Repartition’s leaders turned from doctrinaire pop-

ulism to Marxist socialism and formed the first

Russian Marxist organization, Emancipation of La-

bor.

Neither Black Repartition nor Emancipation of

Labor had significant influence over the small rev-

olutionary movement inside of Russia in the 1880s,

though Emancipation of Labor participated as the

Russian representatives to the socialist Second In-

ternational. Isolated in Switzerland, Black Reparti-

tion was ill-equipped to build the revolutionary

consciousness among workers that they had

deemed essential to a real revolution. Their leaders

were important, however, in the formation of the

Russian Social Democratic Workers Party at the

turn of the century.

See also: LAND AND FREEDOM PARTY; MARXISM; PEASANT

ECONOMY; PEOPLE’S WILL, THE; SECOND ECONOMY;

TERRORISM

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Barron, Samuel H. (1963). Plekhanov: The Father of Russ-

ian Marxism. Stanford, CA: Stanford University

Press.

Haimson, Leopold H. (1955). The Russian Marxists and

the Origins of Bolshevism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press.

Naimark, Norman. (1983). Terrorists and Social Democ-

rats. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Venturi, Franco. (1960). Roots of Revolution. New York:

Grosset & Dunlap.

A. D

ELANO

ARM

BLACK SEA FLEET

The Black Sea Fleet came into being in 1783, when

naval units were formed in the Bay of Akhtiar (and

from 1784 at Sevastopol) to serve in the Sea of

Azov and in wars against Turkey. During the

Crimean War (1853–1856) it fought several naval

battles, and its sailors were deployed on land in the

defense of Sevastopol. The Paris Peace Conference

in 1856 allowed Russia to have naval units in the

Black Sea, a right expanded by the 1871 London

Conference. At the start of World War I, the Black

Sea Fleet consisted of five battleships, two cruisers,

seventeen destroyers, and a number of auxiliary

vessels; during the conflict it engaged in several ac-

tions against the Germans and Turks.

The fleet also became a center of revolutionary

activity. In 1904 socialist cells were organized

among its sailors, and this led to the mutiny on

the battleship Potemkin the following year. In De-

cember 1917 Bolsheviks and other factions were

active among the sailors. In May 1920 units that

had sided with the Bolsheviks were organized as

the Black Sea and Azov naval units, both of which

took part in the fighting against Peter Wrangel’s

White forces. The Tenth Party Congress in 1921

decided to form a fleet in the Black Sea and the Sea

of Azov using two repaired destroyers and five es-

cort vessels. Over the years these were substantially

reinforced by the addition of larger ships and naval

aviation. On January 11, 1935, the Council of Peo-

ple’s Commissars combined the Azov and Black Sea

units to form a new Black Sea Fleet. The Great Ter-

ror took a heavy toll among naval officers, and all

of the fleet’s commanders were purged. In Janu-

ary 1938, I. S. Iumashev was appointed comman-

der, only to be replaced by F. S. Oktiabrsky in

August 1939.

At the start of World War II the fleet had one

battleship, six cruisers, seventeen destroyers, and

numerous cutters, minelayers, mine sweepers, tor-

pedo boats, and auxiliary vessels. It also had 625

aircraft. The Luftwaffe, operating with little oppo-

sition in the early days of the war, destroyed many

Soviet ships and port facilities, but nonetheless the

Black Sea Fleet managed to evacuate Odessa and

Sevastopol. Overall, however, the performance of

the Red Army in the Crimea in 1941 and 1942 was

a succession of defeats at the hands of an out-

numbered and outgunned enemy. During October

and November 1941, Vice Admiral G. I. Levchenko

commanded the defense of the Crimea, but in De-

cember he was arrested and sentenced to ten years

BLACK SEA FLEET

154

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

(later released). When German forces advanced into

the Caucasus, the Black Sea Fleet landed troops be-

hind their lines at Novorossiysk, an inconclusive

battle glorified when Leonid Brezhnev was in power

because of his participation as a political officer. In

1943, with the German defeat at Stalingrad and re-

treat from the Caucasus, the navy conducted an-

other landing at Kerch, which also failed. In May

1943 Oktiabrsky was replaced by L. A. Vla-

dimirsky, but he was reinstated in March 1944 and

continued as commander until November 1948. In

1944 and 1945, the Black Sea Fleet and the Danube

Flotilla supported the Red Army’s offensive opera-

tions in southeastern Europe.

Beginning in the 1950s, the Black Sea Fleet be-

gan to receive new ships and was a major compo-

nent of the Soviet advance into the Mediterranean

and the third world, but its buildup was marred

by an explosion on the Novorossiysk in October

1955, the greatest peacetime disaster in the history

of the Soviet Navy, which cost the commander in

chief of the Navy, Admiral N. G. Kuznetsov, his

job. The buildup, which even included the intro-

duction of aircraft carriers, continued until the

breakup of the Soviet Union. After 1991 both Rus-

sia and Ukraine claimed ownership of the fleet. An

agreement on May 28, 1997, gave Russia the more

modern ships and a twenty-year lease on the Sev-

astopol naval base. The Black Sea Fleet is now a

shadow of its once-proud self, decaying along with

other Russian military assets.

See also: CRIMEAN WAR; POTEMKIN MUTINY; PURGES, THE

GREAT; TURKEY, RELATIONS WITH; WORLD WAR I;

WORLD WAR II

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Felgenhauer, Tony. (1999). Ukraine, Russia and the Black

Sea Fleet Accords. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univer-

sity, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and Inter-

national Affairs Case Study. Available at <www

.wws.princeton.edu/~cases/papers/ukraine.html>.

Nekrasov, George. (1992). North of Gallipoli: The Black

Sea Fleet at War, 1914–1917. New York: Columbia

University Press.

ICHAEL

ARRISH

BLAT

The use of personal influence to obtain something

of value.

Blat, common slang in Soviet times, comes

from an older Russian expression, blatnoy zhargon,

“thieves’ talk”, which accompanied misdemeanors.

For example, an industrial tolkach (“pusher” or ex-

pediter) might use blat to obtain a necessary part

or material without a planned allocation order

(naryad). This could be better than waiting for es-

sential supplies through formal channels, because

the monthly and yearly plans had deadlines for ful-

fillment. One way of accommodating a friendly

pusher would be to declare perfectly good output

“rejects,” which could be legally sold without an

allocation order. Use of blat would be more likely

if the receiving enterprise were producing a low-

priority consumer good. A citizen might also em-

ploy blat to secure a larger apartment in a favorable

location.

Generally speaking, use of blat implied a reci-

procal obligation in the future, but it could involve

a gift of a bottle of vodka or small bribe. Blat usu-

ally functioned between friends or relations; one

hesitated to deal with complete strangers because

these transactions were illegal and penalties could

be severe. With taut planning, when goods and

apartments were always short, a popular folk say-

ing was “Blat is higher than Stalin!” Such informal

arrangements were vital to offset the many gaps

of Soviet planning and to allow managers to ful-

fill their plans and citizens to survive and live with

some comfort. In many cases, then, blat may be

said to have been functional for the totalitarian or-

der, even if somewhat illicit. On the other hand, it

also detracted from the competitive advantage the

system’s directors wished to give to important pro-

duction, which was subject to stringent control.

See also: BLACK MARKET

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Berliner, Joseph. (1957). Factory and Manager in the USSR.

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

ARTIN

C. S

PECHLER

BLOCH, JAN

(1836-1902), Jewish-Polish born industrialist,

banker, railroad magnate, and adviser to the Russ-

ian Ministry of Finance; author of Future War in

Its Technical, Economic, and Political Relations

(1898).

BLOCH, JAN

155

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

Jan Bloch, also known as Jean de Bloch and

Ivan Stanislavovich Bliokh, was born in Radom, in

the kingdom of Poland, to Jewish parents. He con-

verted to Calvinism in the 1850s and to Catholi-

cism upon his marriage into a prominent banking

family of Warsaw. Bloch made his fortune in the

railway boom of the 1860s, when he funded the

construction of rail lines in southwest Russia. He

was a strong advocate of liberal reform.

Bloch addressed the technical, economic, and

political aspects of modern, industrial war. He com-

bined a detailed analysis of military technology and

the changes it was bringing to the battlefield with

a strategic-operational assessment of the role of

railroads, and concluded that defense would dom-

inate the offense, making impossible a single, deci-

sive battle. Maneuver would give way to firepower

and positional warfare. Indecision, when coupled

with the capacity of modern economies to gener-

ate war materials for the front, would turn a gen-

eral European war into a protracted and bloody

conflict. Modern war in this form would lead to

social crisis and revolution. Bloch concluded that a

general European war would be so destructive that

statesmen would be prudent enough to avoid un-

leashing one.

Bloch’s pacifism was not utopian, but rather

was founded upon pragmatism and pessimism. Be-

hind Bloch’s analysis of future war stood several

decades of sustained study of railroads and their

impact on the national economy, national finances,

and the study of the so-called Jewish question and

modern anti-Semitism. Moreover, his research

work rested upon a methodology that was dis-

tinctly modern and interdisciplinary, involving the

collective research of specialists in a research insti-

tute. Bloch’s practical influence on the government

of Nicholas II was limited and short-lived, culmi-

nating in a call for a European disarmament con-

ference. Bloch opposed any military adventure in

the Far East. He died in 1902, before the Russo-

Japanese War provided a warning of political and

military things to come.

See also: MILITARY, IMPERIAL ERA; RAILWAYS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bloch, Jan. (1991). Is War Now Impossible? Being an

Abridgement of the War of the Future in Its Technical,

Economic, and Political Relations. London: Gregg Re-

vivals.

Kipp, Jacob W. (1996). “Soldiers and Civilians Con-

fronting Future War: Lev Tolstoy, Jan Bloch, and

Their Russian Military Critics.” In Tooling for War:

Military Transformation in the Industrial Age, ed.

Stephen D. Chiabotti. Chicago: Imprint Publications.

ACOB

W. K

IPP

BLOK, ALEXANDER ALEXANDROVICH

(1880–1921), poet, playwright, essayist.

Alexander Blok, one of Russia’s greatest poets

and a key figure in the Symbolist movement, was

born in St. Petersburg in 1880, into an aristocratic

family of German and Russian descent. His father

was a professor of law at the University of War-

saw and a talented musician; his mother, a poet

and translator. Blok’s parents separated shortly

after his birth; he spent his childhood with his

maternal grandfather, botanist Andrei Beketov, un-

til his mother obtained legal divorce in 1889,

remarried, and brought Blok with her into her new

apartment. Blok wrote verse from his early child-

hood on, but his serious poetry began around

age eighteen. He studied law without success at

the University of Petersburg, transferred to the

Historical-Philosophical Division, and received his

degree in 1906.

As a young writer, Blok made the acquaintance

of Symbolist poets, including Vladimir Soloviev

and Andrei Bely. His first poetry collection Stikhi o

prekrasnoy dame (Verses on a beautiful lady) was

published in 1904. Inspired by a mystical experi-

ence and his relationship with Lyubov Men-

deleyeva, daughter of the famous chemist, whom

he married in 1903, the poems, resonant with Ro-

mantic influence, depict a woman both earthly and

divine, praised and summoned by the poet. Despite

the sublime character of these poems, there are

early signs of rupture and disturbance; the suppli-

catory tone itself borders on despair.

Blok followed his first collection with the lyric

drama Balaganchik (The fair show booth), staged

in 1906, and his second poetry collection,

Nechayannaya radost (Inadvertent joy, 1907). These

propelled him to fame. From there he continued to

write prolifically, developing a distinctly tumul-

tuous and sonorous style and influencing his con-

temporaries profoundly. His unfinished verse epic

Vozmezdie (Retribution, 1910–1921), occasioned by

the death of his father, chronicles his family his-

tory as an allegory of Russia’s eventual spiritual

resurrection; the cycle Na pole Kulikovom (On the

field of kulikovo, 1908), celebrates Russia’s victory

BLOK, ALEXANDER ALEXANDROVICH

156

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

in 1380 over the Mongol Tatars. Yet, despite the

spiritual optimism of both works, their lyrical

heights coincide with expressions of despair.

Blok supported the 1917 Revolution, perceiv-

ing it as a spiritual event, a step toward a trans-

formed Christian world. Yet his twelve-part poem

Dvenadtsat (The twelve, 1918) suggests deep am-

bivalence. Among the most complex and contro-

versial of Blok’s works, it mixes voices and idioms

(slogans, war cries, laments, wry remarks) with-

out resolving the discord. The shifts of rhythm and

diction, the mimicry of sounds, and the punctua-

tion of the verse with diverse exclamations over-

whelm the Christian motif.

Blok’s disillusionment with the Soviet bureau-

cracy and censorship is suggested in his fierce and

eloquent essay “On the Poet’s Calling” (1921), at

one level a short treatise on Alexander Pushkin, at

another level, a discussion of the conflict between

the poet (“son of harmony”) and the “mob” (chern).

The poet’s calling, according to Blok, is to create

form (cosmos) out of raw sound (chaos); this goal

is opposed by the mob—the officials and bureau-

crats, those committed to everyday vanities.

Blok died in 1921 from a mysterious (possibly

venereal) disease, in a state of malnutrition, despair,

heavy drinking, and mental illness. His work con-

tinued to be published in the Soviet Union after his

death, with a marked discrepancy between official

and unofficial interpretations.

See also: PUSHKIN, ALEXANDER SERGEYEVICH; SILVER AGE

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Berberova, Nina. (1996). Aleksandr Blok: A Life, tr. Robyn

Marsack. New York: George Braziller.

Blok, Alexander. (1974). Selected Poems [of] Alexander Blok,

tr. John Stallworthy and Peter France. Ham-

mondsworth, UK: Penguin.

Chukovsky, Kornei. (1982). Alexander Blok as Man and

Poet, tr. and ed. Diana Burgin and Katherine O’Con-

nor. Ann Arbor, MI: Ardis.

IANA

ENECHAL

BLOODY SUNDAY

On January 22, 1905, a peaceful demonstration of

workers in St. Petersburg was dispersed by troops

with considerable loss of life. The event triggered

the 1905 Revolution.

The demonstration was organized by the As-

sembly of Russian Factory and Mill Workers of St.

Petersburg, a labor organization patronized initially

by police authorities and led by an Orthodox priest,

Father Georgy Gapon. When four members of the

Assembly were fired from the giant Putilov Works

just before Christmas, the Assembly felt its very

existence threatened and decided to resort to the

desperate means of an illegal strike. The Putilov

Works was struck on the January 16, but by Jan-

uary 20 the entire city of St. Petersburg was par-

alyzed by the strike. All eleven branches of the

Assembly became perpetual meeting places for the

strikers. There was much discussion about the

workers presenting a petition to Nicholas II, out-

lining their grievances. At a meeting with some of

his lieutenants, Gapon asked if they should not take

their petition directly to the tsar himself. The idea

was enthusiastically supported and spread like

wildfire. When the petition was finished, copies of

“The Most Humble and Loyal Address” were sent

to important ministers and the tsar. The address

was to be delivered at 2

. on Sunday at the Win-

ter Palace Square.

Before the fateful day, the branches of the As-

sembly held continuous meetings; the petition was

read, and workers cried, fell on their knees, and

swore to die for their cause. Wound up by the or-

atory, they were determined to reach the Palace

Square. The Minister of the Interior, not realizing

the seriousness of the situation, assured Nicholas

II that matters were under control and that he was

completely confident a show of force would be suf-

ficient to stop the demonstration.

Each branch made its own arrangement to ar-

rive at the Square by 2

. Members of the far-

thest branch departed in the early morning hours.

The largest procession came from the main branch

at the Putilov Works, and was led by Gapon. Ef-

forts were made to give it a religious appearance:

Religious paraphernalia, icons, and portraits of

tsars were carried at the head of the procession.

Shortly after eleven o’clock the immense crowd be-

gan to move, singing prayers and the national an-

them just as church bells were announcing the end

of services. The crowd moved along the main thor-

oughfare toward the Narva Triumphal Arch, where

the road across the river was blocked by troops.

The commander tried to disperse the crowd with

cavalry; then the bugle sounded a warning, fol-

lowed by a warning volley over the crowd. This

seemed only to encourage workers; they closed

ranks and, singing louder, began to run at the

BLOODY SUNDAY

157

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

troops. Soldiers lowered their rifles and began

shooting at the crowd. Most of the casualties that

day occurred during this procession. Similar events

unfolded in several other locations. In some areas

the crowds were dispersed without the use of

firearms; in others, workers were allowed to pass

on their own. On one bridge the officer said he could

not let them cross but did not stop workers from

crossing on the ice below the bridge.

Despite the shootings, many workers reached

the Square, where the Guards barred their way. In

the crowd were many survivors of earlier shoot-

ings; many were wounded, but all anxiously

awaited the appointed hour. The hour came and

nothing happened. As the demonstrators were be-

coming unruly, the commander of the Guards de-

cided to disperse them. A volley was fired near

Alexander Garden. The crowd was pushed onto

Nevsky Prospect, where some officials in uniforms

and policemen were attacked. Troops tried to clear

the area, and more shots were fired.

In Russia and abroad, there was universal re-

vulsion at the shooting of peaceful demonstrators.

The authorities themselves were shocked; nobody

had wanted what happened. The press reported thou-

sands killed, but the official count eventually listed

130 killed, including a policeman. Bloody Sunday, as

it became known, began the Revolution of 1905.

See also: GAPON, GEORGY APOLLONOVICH; REVOLUTION

OF 1905

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ascher, Abraham. (1988). “Gapon and Bloody Sunday.”

In his Revolution of 1905, vol. 1. Stanford, CA: Stan-

ford University Press.

Sablinsky, Walter. (1976). The Road to Bloody Sunday: Fa-

ther Gapon and the St. Petersburg Massacre of 1905.

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

ALTER

ABLINSKY

BOBRIKOV, NIKOLAI IVANOVICH

(1839–1904) governor general of the Grand Duchy

of Finland and Russian nationalist.

Nikolai Ivanovich Bobrikov has left a lasting

imprint on the collective memory of the Finns as

the personification of the oppressive Russification

policies toward national minorities. Originally Bo-

brikov, chief of staff of the St. Petersburg military

district, was appointed governor general of the

Grand Duchy of Finland in August 1898 to bring

about closer integration of the separate Finnish

army with the Russian armed forces. The new Con-

scription Act, drafted by the Russian General Staff,

not only aroused strong protests in Finland but even

failed to receive the sanction of the Russian State

Council in 1901. Bobrikov then appealed directly to

Nicholas II who ordered, according to Bobrikov’s

wishes, the total abolition of the Finnish army. Im-

mediately after assuming his duties, the strongly

nationalist Bobrikov also changed some Finnish

symbols and procedural matters that in his view

boosted the “false idea of the separateness of the

borderland.” In the same vein, Bobrikov made the

Finnish Senate and the central administration adopt

the Russian language. He also initiated both the abo-

lition of the Finnish tariff and monetary institutions

and the governmental supervision of the university.

Furthermore, he envisioned but did not accomplish

the spreading of the Russian language to local ad-

ministration, the thorough inspection of the text-

books used in Finnish schools, and the introduction

of the autocratic system in Finland. Bobrikov faced

opposition in Finland in the form of demonstration

and strikes, but he largely succeeded in splitting the

opposition by skillfully manipulating it, imposing

strict censorship, and strongly curtailing the right

of free speech and assembly. To combat emerging

activist groups, Bobrikov sought and achieved dic-

tatorial rights in 1903. By that time his original

supporters, Minister of War Alexei Kuropatkin and

the Minister of the Interior Vyacheslav Plehve, had

already shown some weariness of the harsh meth-

ods Bobrikov invariably used when dealing with the

Finns. Finnish activists had made plans to assassi-

nate Bobrikov but were preempted by an individual

malcontent on June 16,1904.

See also: FINLAND; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, TSARIST;

RUSSIFICATION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Polvinen, Tuomo. (1995). Imperial Borderland: Bobrikov

and the Attempted Russification of Finland, 1898–1904.

London: Hurst & Company.

UOMO

OLVINEN

BOGOLYUBSKY, ANDREI YAROSLAVICH

See ANDREI YAROSLAVICH.

BOBRIKOV, NIKOLAI IVANOVICH

158

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

BOLOTNIKOV, IVAN ISAYEVICH

(c. 1565-1608), outstanding rebel military leader

during Russia’s Time of Troubles.

Ivan Bolotnikov led the so-called Bolotnikov re-

bellion (1606–1607) against Tsar Vasily Shuisky.

That rebellion was the largest and most powerful

uprising in Russian history prior to the twentieth

century and has often been compared to the rebel-

lions led by Stepan Razin and Emelian Pugachev.

For several generations, scholars erroneously

claimed that the Bolotnikov rebellion was a social

revolution against serfdom led by a radical former

slave, Ivan Bolotnikov. In fact, the rebellion was

not a social revolution; serfs did not actively par-

ticipate in it, and rebel goals never included the abo-

lition of serfdom. Instead, Bolotnikov led rebel

forces loyal to Tsar Dmitry against the usurper

Tsar Vasily Shuisky. Wrongly believing that

Dmitry had escaped Shuisky’s assassins, the rebels

essentially renewed the civil war that had brought

Tsar Dmitry to power. Bolotnikov’s forces came

from all social classes, and the uprising against

Shuisky quickly spread from southwestern Russia

to cover half the country.

Little is known about Bolotnikov. In the late

sixteenth century, he apparently served the tsar as

a cavalryman but fell on hard times and indentured

himself to a rich aristocrat as an elite military slave.

He later fled to the southern frontier and joined the

Volga or Don cossacks. Bolotnikov was eventually

captured by Crimean Tatars and sold into slavery;

he spent several years working on a Turkish ship

before Germans liberated him. On his way back to

Russia, he passed through Poland, where he heard

about Shuisky’s coup d’état. Bolotnikov made his

way to Sambor (home of Marina Mniszech), where

a man claiming to be Tsar Dmitry interviewed him.

“Tsar Dmitry” (Mikhail Molchanov) appointed

Bolotnikov commander-in-chief of all rebel forces

struggling against Shuisky.

Sometime during the summer of 1606, Bolot-

nikov arrived in Putivl (headquarters of the rebel-

lion in Tsar Dmitry’s name), took command of a

rebel army, and began marching toward Moscow.

He defeated Shuisky’s rapidly retreating forces, and

town after town welcomed Bolotnikov as a hero.

During the siege of Moscow (late fall 1606), how-

ever, rivalry between Bolotnikov and another rebel

commander, Istoma Pashkov, led to Pashkov’s be-

trayal of the rebels during a decisive battle on De-

cember 2, 1606. Forced to break off the siege,

Bolotnikov retreated in good order to Kaluga,

where his skillful defense of the fortress frustrated

all efforts by Shuisky’s commanders to capture the

town. After breaking up the siege of Kaluga, Bolot-

nikov led his men to stone-walled Tula to link up

with other rebel forces. Soon Tula came under

siege, but once again Bolotnikov’s skill and energy

frustrated his enemies. Eventually, Tsar Vasily’s

army built a dam below Tula and flooded the

town, forcing the rebels to surrender on October

10, 1607.

Bolotnikov managed to negotiate good terms

for the rebels. He gave himself up, but his men

(with their weapons) were allowed to go free.

Many of them immediately rejoined the civil war

against Shuisky by entering the service of the sec-

ond False Dmitry. Bolotnikov was taken in chains

to Moscow as a trophy of Tsar Vasily’s victory

over the rebels. He was then transferred to Kar-

gopol in north Russia, where he was blinded and

drowned in early 1608. So great was his reputa-

tion that even some of Shuisky’s supporters pri-

vately criticized the tsar for executing the brilliant

rebel leader.

See also: DMITRY, FALSE; MNISZECH, MARINA; PUGACHEV,

EMELIAN IVANOVICH; SERFDOM; SHUISKY, VASILY

IVANOVICH; SLAVERY; TIME OF TROUBLES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Avrich, Paul. (1972). Russian Rebels, 1600–1800. New

York: Schocken Books.

Bussow, Conrad. (1994). The Disturbed State of the Russ-

ian Realm, tr. G. Edward Orchard. Montreal: McGill-

Queen’s.

Dunning, Chester. (2001). Russia’s First Civil War: The

Time of Troubles and the Founding of the Romanov Dy-

nasty. University Park: Pennsylvania State Univer-

sity Press.

Skrynnikov, Ruslan. (1988). The Time of Troubles: Russia

in Crisis, 1604–1618, tr. Hugh Graham. Gulf Breeze,

FL: Academic International Press.

HESTER

UNNING

BOLSHEVISM

Bolshevism was a dissenting movement within

Russian Marxism before World War I that became

the founding political party of the Soviet Union.

The Russian word bolshevik means literally a per-

son in the majority, as opposed to menshevik, a

person in the minority. These words originated at

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

the second party congress of the Russian Social

Democratic Workers Party (RSDWP) that convened

in 1903 in Brussels, then London. The dominant

figure in the Bolshevik faction of the RSDWP was

Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov (1872–1924), more com-

monly known by his revolutionary name, Lenin.

Marxism was a radical ideology that predicted

a revolution by the working classes that would

seize power from the capitalist class, or bourgeoisie.

The Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905 indeed pre-

cipitated a revolution, but the Romanov autocracy

of Tsar Nicholas II survived by a combination of

reform and repression. The RSDWP originally fo-

cused its efforts on the urban working classes in

Russia, but Lenin and the Bolsheviks ultimately tri-

umphed because they recognized the need to appeal

to the poor peasantry as well.

Bolsheviks were divided between educated in-

tellectuals and factory workers. Some became pro-

fessional revolutionaries. Others became leaders of

the labor movement and strikers in industrial

workplaces. The professional revolutionaries fa-

vored an illegal conspiracy to seize power, tracing

their roots to the Jacobins of the French Revolu-

tion and the Populist terrorists of the 1870s in Rus-

sia. The working-class Social Democrats favored a

revolution that would benefit workers and their

families, not intellectuals seeking power.

Russian Social Democrats were inspired by the

spontaneous unrest that occurred in Russia in

1905—strikes, peasant violence, and demands for

a constitution and a parliament. Neither Bolsheviks

nor Mensheviks played a leading role that year. The

October Manifesto issued by the tsar promised a

constitutional system with an elected parliament,

or Duma. After these concessions, the government

combined peasant land reform with bloody police

repression to quiet the countryside.

After 1905, Bolsheviks and Mensheviks faced

new choices. Should they participate in a bourgeois

parliament such as the Duma? Or should they boy-

cott its elections and recall their deputies? Should

they focus on legal means of achieving power

through the system? Or should they engage in il-

legal actions such as terror, bank robberies, and

strikes? Should they limit themselves to the work-

ing classes in the towns? Or should they look for

support in the peasantry as well?

The Bolsheviks were particularly attentive to

the orthodox Marxism of Karl Kautsky in Germany

and the radical syndicalism of Georges Sorel and

others in France and Italy. Orthodox Marxists

feared any revision of Karl Marx’s ideas in favor of

reform rather than revolution. The syndicalists be-

lieved in forming trade unions and convincing

workers to believe in a future general strike. After

1905, the Bolsheviks were deeply divided between

those who, like Lenin, claimed to be following

Marxist scientific orthodoxy, and those who, like

Alexander Bogdanov, believed Marxism was not a

set of truths, but a set of useful myths that work-

ers might be convinced to believe. Lenin, in his book

Materialism and Empirio-criticism (1909), attacked

Bogdanov’s relativism.

The Bolsheviks fought over who should con-

trol the party faction’s money and RSDWP schools

for workers and revolutionaries in Paris, Bologna,

and Capri. Lenin’s followers in European exile ar-

gued with Bogdanov’s followers inside Russia. Al-

though the Bolshevik journal was called Pravda

(Truth), the Bolsheviks by 1914 were a shrinking

group of alienated intellectuals who could agree on

little except for their old feud with the Mensheviks,

who maintained better ties with factory workers.

When World War I broke out in 1914, there

was no great general strike. Russian socialists were

divided among defensists who patriotically sup-

ported their government at war against Germany

and Austria-Hungary, and pacifists who wanted to

end the war. Lenin wanted the war transformed

into a revolution and civil war, then a workers’

revolution. But most Russian socialists, exiled ei-

ther in Europe or Siberia, hardly affected the war

effort.

In 1917 the February Revolution surprised

both the government and the revolutionaries.

Nicholas II abdicated. A liberal Provisional Gov-

ernment shared power with radical workers’ coun-

cils, known as soviets, that sprang up in the

factories, farms, and army units. Returning from

exile, Lenin and the Bolsheviks proclaimed war

against the Provisional Government. As the un-

popular great war dragged on, the Bolshevik pro-

gram of workers’ revolution and land reform

gained them majorities in the soviets. By October,

the Bolshevik-dominated soviets easily took power

in the major cities from the weakened Provisional

Government.

The Bolshevik Revolution did not end the dis-

pute between Lenin and the other Bolsheviks. Bog-

danov led a proletarian culture movement popular

among the masses for a few years. Leon Trotsky

became a popular and independent leader of the new

Red Army. And Josef Stalin quietly worked to cre-

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

ate a single-party dictatorship that exiled or killed

its enemies. By 1924 the Bolsheviks had become a

party in their own right, first the Russian Com-

munist Party (Bolsheviks) in 1918, and then the

Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1924. Ul-

timately the Bolsheviks led a massive and violent

program of industrialization, collectivization of

agriculture, and purges that made the Soviet Union

as autocratic and unpopular as its imperial prede-

cessor.

See also: FEBRUARY REVOLUTION; COMMUNISM; MEN-

SHEVIKS; OCTOBER REVOLUTION; SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC

WORKERS PARTY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Pomper, Phillip. (1990). Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin: The In-

telligentsia in Power. New York: Columbia Univer-

sity Press.

Service, Robert. (2000). Lenin. A Biography. London:

Macmillan.

Sochor, Zenovia. (1988). Revolution and Culture: The Bog-

danov-Lenin Controversy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univer-

sity Press.

Ulam, Adam. (1965). The Bolsheviks: The Intellectual and

Political History of the Triumph of Communism in Rus-

sia. New York: Macmillan.

Williams, Robert C. (1986). The Other Bolsheviks: Lenin

and his Critics, 1904–1914. Bloomington: Indiana

University Press.

OBERT

C. W

ILLIAMS

BOLSHOI THEATER

Moscow’s Bolshoi (“grand”) Theater became a kind

of national theater and showcase for Russian opera

and ballet in the Soviet period. The original Bolshoi

Theater opened in 1825, although historians trace

the theater’s lineage through a series of private the-

aters operating in Moscow as early as 1776. The

Bolshoi Theater stands on the site of the last of

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TEVE

IDLER

UPER

TOCK

these, which burned in 1805. The drama, opera,

and ballet troupes of these older, private Moscow

theaters were combined to create the Moscow Im-

perial Theaters the following year. One year after

the drama troupe moved to a new home (the Maly

[“small”] Theater) in 1824, the opera and ballet

troupes took up residence in the newly constructed

Bolshoi Theater. That theater burned in 1853. The

present theater opened three years later, retaining

the old name.

Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater functioned as a poor

relation to the better-funded, national stage of St.

Petersburg’s Maryinsky Theater until the Soviet

era. Italian and Russian opera troupes coexisted in

the rebuilt house in the nineteenth century, though

Russian opera held a distinctly second place, and

the theater witnessed few noteworthy premieres of

Russian operas. The ballet repertory likewise con-

sisted mostly of restaged works from the repertory

of the St. Petersburg ballet. Marius Petipa’s 1869

Don Quixote furnishes the rare exception. When Pe-

ter Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake debuted in the Bolshoi

Theater in 1877, it was considered a flop (and was

reworked in St. Petersburg in 1894 and 1895). The

opera’s fortunes rose slightly when Sergei Rach-

maninoff became its chief conductor from 1904 to

1906. Rachmaninoff debuted two of his own op-

eras in the theater, which then featured such out-

standing singers as Fyodor Chalyapin, Leonid

Sobinov, and Antonina Nezhdanova.

The Bolshoi Theater became a showcase of So-

viet operatic and balletic talent in the Stalin era.

Dancers and choreographers from St. Petersburg

were transferred to Moscow, much as the reper-

tory had once been. A highly dramatic, athletic

style evolved in the ballet in the post–World War

II period, as the ballet school began to produce

home-grown stars. Dancers such as Maya Pliset-

skaya and Vladimir Vasiliev achieved worldwide

renown touring the world in new vehicles in the

years of the post-Stalin Thaw, though the com-

pany’s balletmasters and repertory continued to

be imported from Leningrad. The opera followed

a similar strategy, mostly restaging works that

had premiered successfully elsewhere. None of the

operas of Dmitri Shostakovich or Sergei Prokofiev

had their premieres in the Bolshoi, for example.

Instead, the opera specialized in monumental

productions of the nineteenth-century Russian

repertory, though singers such as Galina Vish-

nevskaya, Irina Arkhipova, Elena Obraztsova, and

Vladimir Atlantov established international ca-

reers in them.

The prestige of both the Bolshoi’s opera and

ballet fell precipitously in the first post-Soviet

decade. The era of glasnost revealed that produc-

tions, performers, and the theater’s management

were out of step with the theatrical mainstream

of Europe and North America as once-generous

state subsidies dwindled. As the theater ap-

proached artistic and financial bankruptcy, the

Bolshoi ceded its place as a national institution to

the more western-oriented Maryinsky Theater in

St. Petersburg.

See also: BALLET; DIAGILEV, SERGEI PAVLOVICH; NIJIN-

SKY, VASLAV FOMICH; OPERA; PAVLOVA, ANNA

MATVEYEVNA; RACHMANINOV, SERGEI VASILIEVICH;

THEATER

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Pokrovsky, Boris, and Grigorovich, Yuri. (1979). The Bol-

shoi, tr. Daryl Hislop. New York: Morrow.

Roslavleva, Natalia. (1966). Era of the Russian Ballet. Lon-

don: Da Capo.

Swift, Mary Grace. (1968). The Art of the Dance in the

U.S.S.R. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame

Press.

CHOLL

BONNER, YELENA GEORGIEVNA

(b. 1923), human rights activist and widow of dis-

sident Andrei Sakharov; recipient of the National

Endowment for Democracy’s 1995 Democracy

Award.

Yelena Bonner grew up among the elite of the

Communist Party. Her mother, Ruth Bonner,

joined the party in 1924. Her stepfather, Gevork

Alikhanov, was a secretary of the Communist In-

ternational. Bonner’s childhood ended abruptly

with the arrests of her stepfather and mother in

1937. She finished high school in Leningrad and

volunteered as a nurse during World War II. After

the war, Bonner attended medical school and

worked as a pediatrician.

Bonner met physicist and political dissident An-

drei Sakharov in 1970, at the trial of human rights

activists in Kaluga. They married in 1972. Bonner

devoted herself to Sakharov, representing him at

the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in 1975. After

Sakharov’s exile to Gorky in 1980, Bonner became

his sole link to Moscow and the West, until her

BONNER, YELENA GEORGIEVNA

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