Encyclopedia of Russian History

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.

Central Statistical Agency (Tsentralnoe statistich-

eskoe upravlenie [TsSU]) under its jurisdiction. The

first director was Pavel Ilich Popov. Late in the

1920s TsSU operated as an independent people’s

commissariat, but was abolished at the beginning

of 1930. Its functions were transferred to the state

planning agency (Gosplan), operating under the

name TsUNKhU. Later, on August 10, 1948, TsSU

was separated from Gosplan, once again becoming

a fully independent organ, this time attached to the

USSR Council of Ministers. The journal Vestnik sta-

tistiki was inaugurated at this time, and TsSU

began publishing its documents through Gossta-

tizdat. Goskomstat RF’s Economic and Statistical

Research Institute was created in 1963 under the

name Research Institute for Computer Based Fore-

casting. The main computing center started soon

thereafter in 1967. TsSU was transformed into the

Gosudarstvennii Komitet SSSR po statistik (Goskom-

stat SSSR) in 1987.

The quality and reliability of Goskomstat’s

work has always been controversial among econ-

omists East and West. A consensus arose during

the Cold War that the statistics were sufficiently

accurate to support valid judgments about growth

and international comparisons, but this appraisal

later appeared misguided. Goskomstat’s data showed

Soviet GDP and per capita consumption growth ex-

ceeding that of the United States through 1988, a

claim inconsistent with the USSR’s internal col-

lapse.

See also: ECONOMIC GROWTH, SOVIET; GOSPLAN; POPOV,

PAVEL ILICH

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Becker, Abraham. (1969). Soviet National Income 1958–

1964. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Bergson, Abram. (1953). “Reliability and Usability of So-

viet Statistics: A Summary Appraisal.” American Sta-

tistician 7(5):13–16.

Bergson, Abram. (1961). The Real National Income of So-

viet Russia since 1928. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-

versity Press.

Central Intelligence Agency. (1982). USSR: Measures of

Economic Growth and Development, 1950–80. Wash-

ington, DC: Joint Economic Committee of Congress.

Goskomstat RF <www.gks.ru>.

Rosefielde, Steven. (2003). “The Riddle of Post-War Rus-

sian Economic Growth: Statistics Lied and Were Mis-

construed.” Europe-Asia Studies 55(3):469–481.

TEVEN

OSEFIELDE

CHAADAYEV, PETER YAKOVLEVICH

(1794–1856), Muscovite philospher and social critic.

Peter Yakovlevich Chaadayev is most famous

for the publication of his “First Philosophical Let-

ter” in 1836 in the journal Telescope, which shock-

ingly provoked the subsequent debate between

Slavophiles and Westernizers. The Russian intellec-

tual Alexander Herzen declared Chaadayev’s letter

to be “a shot that rang out in the dark night” that

“shook all thinking Russians.” Count Benkendorf,

chief of the Third Section (the secret police) under

Tsar Nicholas I, considered Chaadayev’s work to be

that of a madman, and so Nicholas I had Chaa-

dayev officially declared insane and ordered that all

copies of the Telescope journal be confiscated. Chaa-

dayev was placed under house arrest for about a

year. The government ordered him to never pub-

lish anything again.

Chaadayev had written his “First Philosophical

Letter Addressed to a Lady” as part of a series of

eight “Philosophical Letters” not in Russian but in

French, which he considered to be “the language

of Europe.” However, the editors of the journal

Telescope published only the first letter in a com-

paratively weak Russian translation. Chaadayev

designed his “Philosophical Letters” as a criticism

of the history of Russian culture in general, and

the effects of religious institutions in his country.

He idealized the history and influence of the Ro-

man Catholic Church, in order to point up the

shortcomings of the Russian Orthodox Church. In

particular, he lashed out at Russian serfdom and

autocracy. He declared that Russians had made no

impact upon world culture. Russia had no impor-

tant past or present; it belonged neither to the East

nor the West. He worried about the malignant

growth of contemporary Russian nationalistic pro-

paganda, which might lead Russians to construct

some foolish past “golden age” or “retrospective

utopia.” In such a case, Russians would not take

advantage of their unique cultural situation, and

their cultural history might only serve as an ex-

ample to others of what not to do.

Most Russians know Chaadayev simply as “a

friend of Alexander Pushkin,” or as a pro-Catholic

ideologue. In fact, he did remain Pushkin’s friend

until the poet’s death in 1837, but he never became

a Roman Catholic. Chaadayev remained Russian

Orthodox all of his life. In 1837 Chaadayev wrote

his “Apologia of a Madman,” an ironic claim that

CHAADAYEV, PETER YAKOVLEVICH

223

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

Russia did indeed have a genuine history but only

since the time of Peter the Great. Despite the fact

that Russians had no “golden age” to fall back on,

they should retain the ability to submit to outside

cultural forces and thus have a potentially great

future.

After 1836 Chaadayev continued to write ar-

ticles on cultural and political issues “for the desk

drawer.” Chaadayev defies categorization; he was

not a typical Russian Westernizer due to his idio-

syncratic interest in religion; nor was he a Slavo-

phile, even though he offered a possible messianic

role for Russia in the future. He had no direct fol-

lowers, aside from his “nephew” and amanuensis,

Mikhail Zhikharev, who scrupulously preserved

Chaadayev’s manuscripts and tried to get some of

them published after Chaadayev’s death. Chaa-

dayev’s lasting heritage was to remind Russian in-

tellectuals to evaluate any of Russia’s supposed

cultural achievements in comparison with those of

the West.

See also: PUSHKIN, ALEXANDER SERGEYEVICH; SLAVO-

PHILES; WESTERNIZERS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Chaadayev, Peter. (1969). The Major Works of Peter Chaa-

dayev: A Translation and Commentary by Raymond T.

McNally. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame

Press.

Chaadayev, Peter. (1991). Philosophical Works of Peter

Chaadayev. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

McNally, Raymond Ted. (1966). “Chaadayev’s Philo-

sophical Letters Written to a Lady and His Apologia

of a Madman.” Forschungen zur osteuropaischen

Geschichte XI (Berlin 1966):24–128.

McNally, Raymond Ted. (1971). Chaadaev and his

Friends: An Intellectual History of Peter Chaadaev and

His Russian Contemporaries. Tallahassee, FL: Diplo-

matic Press.

AYMOND

T. M

ALLY

CHAGALL, MARC

(1887–1985), (Mark Zakharovich Shagal), artist.

Marc Chagall was born in Vitebsk, Russia (now

in Belarus), a major center of Jewish culture. In

1906 he attended Yehuda Pen’s School of Drawing

and Painting in Vitebsk, moving to St. Petersburg

the next year. Over the next three years, he at-

tended art classes at Nikolai Roerich’s Society for

the Encouragement of the Arts and at Savely Zei-

denberg’s private art academy. He also studied un-

der Mstislav Dobuzhinsky at Elizaveta Zvantseva’s

art school. In 1910 Chagall left for Paris and set-

tled in the Russian artist colony, La Ruche, in Mont-

martre. After the opening of his first personal

exhibition at the gallery Der Sturm in Berlin in

1914, Chagall made a trip to Russia; the outbreak

of World War I made a return to Paris impossible.

Chagall was an enthusiastic supporter of the

Russian Revolution and was made the first Com-

missar for Fine Arts in Vitebsk in 1917. He formed

the Vitebsk Popular Art School in 1919 and invited

Dobuzhinsky, El Lissitzky, Pen, and Ivan Puni (Jean

Pougny) to join the faculty. At the same time, Vera

Yermolayeva, also teaching at the school, invited

Kazimir Malevich to become a member of the staff.

Malevich and his followers formed the Unovis

(Affirmers of the New Art) group, devoted to

Suprematism and essentially hostile to Chagall’s

leadership. In 1920, after a power struggle, Cha-

gall resigned his directorship and moved to

Moscow, where he worked in the Moscow State

Yiddish Theater and the Habimah Theater as a set

designer and muralist.

Growing increasingly disenchanted with the

turmoil of the new communist state, he left Rus-

sia in 1922, immigrating to Berlin. After a year, he

returned to Paris to find that many of the paint-

ings he had left there were missing. However, he

was still able in 1924 to mount his first major ret-

rospective at the Galerie Barbazanges-Hoderbart.

He moved to the United States in 1941, fleeing Nazi

occupation, returning in 1948.

See also: KANDINSKY, VASSILY VASSILIEVICH; MALEVICH,

KAZIMIR SEVERINOVICH

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bessonova, Marina. (1988). Chagall Discovered: From

Russian and Private Collections. New York: H. L.

Levin.

Compton, Susan. (1990). Marc Chagall: My Life, My Dream,

Berlin and Paris, 1922–1940. New York: Prestel.

Harshav, Benjamin. (1992). Marc Chagall and the Jewish

Theater. New York: The Guggenheim Museum.

ARK

ONECNY

CHAGALL, MARC

224

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

CHANCELLERY SYSTEM

From the 1470s, new demands (Novgorod’s an-

nexation, service and land registration, diplomacy)

impinged upon the Muscovite court; its few liter-

ate officials multiplied and specialized. Embryonic

offices between the 1530s and 1550s evolved into

departments, “chancelleries” (izby, later prikazy),

generating their own desiderata, becoming a sig-

nificant (even dominating) element in Muscovite

government—shaping the court and autocracy.

From the 1530s to 1700, the “chancellery system”

(prikaznaia sistema) became a full-fledged early

modern state bureaucracy, in some ways more de-

veloped than its European counterparts, with dif-

ferentiated offices and a professional administrative

staff. It did not contend with estates, incorporated

towns, ecclesiastical institutions, or parliamentary

organs.

Warfare was the primary impetus to the chan-

cellery system; its personnel and documentary lan-

guage were nonecclesiastical, unlike those of

medieval Europe. Chancellery parlance (prikaznoi

yazyk) was basically standard Middle Russian, with

some Mongol-Tatar fiscal and diplomatic termi-

nology and very few Latinate words.

The chancelleries’ primary interests were mili-

tary affairs, diplomacy, taxation, and justice; edu-

cation and social welfare virtually were absent.

Seventy-six percent (117) of the chancelleries han-

dled civil administration, 12 percent (18) royal

court affairs, 8 percent (12) the tsar’s personal mat-

ters; and 4 percent (6) the Patriarchate. Tsars and

their cliques fashioned new bureaus at the start of

a reign, and became acculturated to bureaucratic

norms.

The authorities furbished chancelleries as

needed. One hundred thirty-six (90%) of the 153

chancelleries operated during the 1600s. While Ivan

IV’s military administrative, tax, provincial ad-

ministrative, and justice reforms caused the chan-

celleries to flourish, his Oprichnina temporarily

inflicted harm. Its separate chancelleries suffered a

fate similar to that of the regular state (Zemshchina)

bureaus; in 1570 he murdered the state secretaries

and clerks of both after 1572, new military, finan-

cial, and judicial chancelleries appeared; the chan-

cellery system broadened its control over the

countryside. The Time of Troubles bludgeoned this

system as rival throne claimants divided adminis-

trators. Moscow lost countryside control; the Poles

shut down the chancelleries.

Mikhail Fyodorovich’s first years witnessed

many new court chancelleries, temporary military

chancelleries, and ad hoc social grievance bodies

(e.g., against dominance by unduly powerful indi-

viduals [“strong people”] and tax exemptions for

magnates, well-to-do merchants, and monasteries).

Dyak (clerk) corruption and bribery were conspic-

uous in the 1630s and 1640s; Alexei Mikhailovich’s

later reign and the 1649 Ulozhenie (Law Code)

dampened these excesses.

Alexei’s adviser Boris Morozov created several

military chancelleries. Fyodor Alexeyevich’s gifted

courtiers Yuri Dolgoruky and Ilya Miloslavsky en-

gendered financial and publication chancelleries and

the May and November 1680 financial- and military-

administrative reforms. They streamlined chancel-

leries by merging subordinate chancelleries into the

Military (Razryad) and Foreign Affairs (posolsky

prikaz) Chancelleries and the Chancellery of the

Grand Treasury (prikaz bolshoi kazny)—the culmi-

nation of bureaucratic pyramiding from the 1590s.

The 1682 Musketeers’ Revolt partially unraveled

the 1680 measures. Before 1700, Peter I’s regime

created six chancelleries; three of them inaugurated

the Petrine navy. Peter then dismantled the chan-

celleries; other institutions, culminating in the col-

leges, replaced them.

The Kremlin enclosed most chancelleries. They

housed tribunal hearings, clerks’ writing tables,

and document storage. Bigger chancelleries (Mili-

tary, Foreign Affairs, Service Land [pomestny prikaz])

had separate buildings.

Historians have exaggerated in criticizing the

Muscovite bureaucracy for its numerous offices

and interference in one another’s jurisdiction. Red-

tape (volokita) aside, all knew where to go, though

they might petition tribunals many times. Chan-

celleries of the realm possessed five hierarchies: The

Military Chancellery, during interims of no major

wars (when it manipulated all chancelleries), di-

rected all military-related chancelleries; the Foreign

Affairs Chancellery oversaw territorial chancelleries

governing recently annexed non-Russian lands; the

Chancellery of the Grand Revenue (prikaz bolshogo

prikhoda), supervised Northern Russian tax collec-

tion chancelleries (cheti, chetverti); the Chancellery

of the Grand Court (prikaz bolshogo dvortsa) con-

trolled the ill-understood royal court chancelleries;

and the Patriarch’s Service Chancellery (patriarshy

razryad) oversaw five bureaus in the Patriarchate.

Nine chancelleries existed in the 1550s, 26 in

the 1580s, 35 in the first decade of the 1600s, 57

CHANCELLERY SYSTEM

225

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

in the 1610s; and 68 in the 1620s. Sizes of chan-

celleries varied enormously. The pomestnyi prikaz

multiplied its staff the most: by 12 in 60 years,

from 36 clerks in 1626 to 446 clerks in 1686. The

Razryad reached 125, and the posolskii prikaz 40

clerks; temporary chancelleries (sysknye prikazy)

had as few as 1 or 2.

At least 24 chancelleries (15%) functioned over

a century. Under Romanov rule, 102 bureaus (75%)

existed either 20 years or less (at least 80 years),

highlighting Muscovite leadership’s short-term

versatility and perennial “matters of state” preoc-

cupations. Mean chancellery longevity was 33

years, 84 years the median.

Chancellery jurisdiction was territorial or func-

tional: one region, (e.g., Siberia) or one pan-

territorial function (e.g., felony administration,

collection of prisoner-of-war ransom monies).

Larger chancelleries, for division of labor, had ter-

ritorial or functional “desks” (stoly). The 1600s

razryad had up to 12. Desks could be subdivided

into povytia (sections).

Muscovy had no serious Roman law tradition.

Chancellery officials’ scribal virtuosity and ability

to plan macro-operations (e.g., fortified lines,

fortress construction, land surveys, tax assess-

ment) were impressive, though they lacked the ed-

ucation of European chambers’ lawyers and jurists,

Ottoman kapi-kulu administrators, and Chinese dy-

nastic bureaucrats. Monasteries mostly handled

charity (alms and sick relief). Starting in the early

1700s, the state supported education and social

welfare.

All chancellery officials from boyar to clerk

took rigorous oaths (e.g., personal behavioral is-

sues, secrecy). The chancellery work force was

steeply hierarchical. Tribunals (sing. sudya or

judge) of 2 to 6 men (usually 4) heard court trial

cases and decided other business. Counselor state

secretary (dumny dyak) was the highest, profes-

sional tribunal rank. Boyars and okolnichie, ad-

ministrative nonprofessionals, infiltrated tribunals

from 1600, subverting joint decision making. Solo

decision making by the chief chancellery tribunal

director became de jure in 1680.

Duma tribunal members by the 1690s garnered

at the expense of the dyak and podyachy a greater

share of cash salary entitlements (oklady) than in

the 1620s. Those of boyars and okolnichie ranged

between 265 and 1,200 rubles (617-ruble mean),

and 300 and 760 rubles (385-ruble mean). War-

dens, bailiffs, watchmen, guards, furnace-men, and

janitors were chancellery staff.

Prerevolutionary historiography described the

evolution and structure of the chancelleries, their

employees, and social interaction. Soviet historiog-

raphy until the 1950s and 1960s neglected Mus-

covite administrative history in favor of topics

explicitly related to class conflict.

See also: ALEXEI MIKHAILOVICH; DYAK; IVAN IV; KREM-

LIN; NOVGOROD THE GREAT; OKOLNICHY; OPRICH-

NINA; PATRIARCHATE; PODYACHY; TIME OF TROUBLES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brown, Peter B. (1978). “Early Modern Russian Bureau-

cracy: The Evolution of the Chancellery System from

Ivan III to Peter the Great, 1478–1717.” Ph.D. diss.,

University of Chicago.

Plavsic, Borovoi. (1980). “Seventeenth-Century Chanceries

and Their Staffs.” In Russian Officialdom: The Bu-

reaucratization of Russian Society from the Seventeenth

to the Twentieth Century, eds. Walter McKenzie Pint-

ner and Don Karl Rowney. Chapel Hill: University

of North Carolina Press.

ETER

B. B

ROWN

CHAPAYEV, VASILY IVANOVICH

(1887–1919), soldier and Russian civil war hero.

Were it not for the eponymous novel and

movie, historians would not likely have remem-

bered the name of Chapayev, the unlettered com-

mander of the Red Army’s Twenty-Fifth Infantry

Division during the Russian Civil War. He was in-

strumental in defeating Alexander Kolchak’s

“White” forces in the summer of 1919, but was

killed in the action.

Dmitry Furmanov, the Chapayev brigade’s po-

litical commissar, published a thinly-fictionalized

memoir about Chapayev in 1923. A proto-Social-

ist Realist novel, Chapayev was an immediate best-

seller and turned Chapayev into an overnight hero.

Furmanov’s book spawned a veritable “Chapayev

industry” of songs, games, and jokes. Although

Chapayev was still in print a decade after its publi-

cation and selling well, there can be little doubt that

the immense popularity of the 1934 movie Cha-

payev extended the legend’s life.

CHAPAYEV, VASILY IVANOVICH

226

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

Made by two unknown directors, Georgy

Vasiliev and Sergei Vasiliev, Chapayev debuted on

November 7, 1934, on the seventeenth anniversary

of the Russian Revolution. Reputed to be Stalin’s

favorite movie, Chapayev was also the biggest box-

office hit of the 1930s, selling over 50 million tick-

ets in a five-year period. Even foreign critics and

émigré audiences loved the movie, which starred

Boris Babochkin as the brash commander.

Regardless of what the historic Chapayev was

“really” like as man and hero, on the printed page

and on the screen, he was an antidote to the drear-

iness and conformity of Soviet life. Furmanov was

not a particularly gifted writer. His novella is plainly

written and disjointed. The “Vasilyev Brothers”

were competent directors but no more than that.

Their movie is a rather primitive example of the

early sound film. As many critics have noted, Cha-

payev is an archetypal “cowboy,” a free spirit who

supports revolution, but in his own way. The para-

dox is that Chapayev is an unruly model for “homo

Sovieticus,” especially with the emphasis on man-

as-machine in the 1930s. It is important to re-

member, however, that for Stalin, Chapayev was

the perfect hero—a dead one.

See also: CIVIL WAR OF 1917-1922; MOTION PICTURES; SO-

CIALIST REALISM

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Kenez, Peter. (2001). Cinema and Soviet Society from the Rev-

olution to the Death of Stalin. London: I. B. Tauris.

Luker, Nicholas, ed. (1988). From Furmanov to Sholokhov:

An Anthology of the Classics of Socialist Realism. Ann

Arbor, MI: Ardis.

ENISE

J. Y

OUNGBLOOD

CHAPBOOK LITERATURE

Chapbook literature (Lubochnaya literatura, narod-

naya literatura) refers to inexpensive books pro-

duced for lower-class readers, which were often

associated with Moscow’s Nikolsky Market, center

of the chapbook industry in late imperial Russia.

The proliferation of chapbook literature in

nineteenth-century Russia was linked to the steady

rise of literacy after the emancipation of the serfs

in 1861 and the appearance of a mass market for

affordable reading material. As had earlier been the

case in Britain, France, and the German states, the

growth of the reading public in Russia was paral-

leled by the expansion of the commercial publish-

ing industry, which produced increasing numbers

of titles intended mainly for newly literate lower-

class readers. In the first half of the nineteenth cen-

tury, chapbook publishing was centered in St.

Petersburg, but in the second half of the century,

the most successful chapbook publishers were the

Moscow firms of Sytin, Morozov, Kholmushin,

Shaparov, and Abramov. By 1887 over three mil-

lion copies of 336 chapbook titles were published,

and more than 21 million copies of 2,028 titles in

1914. The chapbooks were usually written by peo-

ple of peasant or lower-class origins, and sold by

city hawkers or rural itinerant peddlers.

Folktales, chivalrous tales, spiritual and didac-

tic works, historical fiction, war stories, and stories

about merchants were the predominant subjects of

commercial chapbooks for most of the nineteenth

century, but by the beginning of the twentieth cen-

tury, stories about crime, romance, and science ac-

counted for a large share of the chapbook market.

Lurid tales of criminal exploits were extremely pop-

ular, featuring heroes such as the bandit Vasily

Churkin or the pickpocket “Light-fingered Sonka.”

Sonka eventually migrated from the pages of the

chapbooks to the silver screen, becoming the hero-

ine of a movie serial. Other stories celebrated indi-

vidual success in achieving material wealth through

education and hard work. Serial detective stories of

foreign origin or inspiration, especially those re-

counting the thrilling adventures of the American

detectives Nat Pinkerton and Nick Carter, enjoyed

tremendous success in the late 1900s.

Many Russian intellectuals were dismayed at

the popularity of the commercial chapbooks,

which they viewed as expressions of a degenerate

urban culture that was corrupting the hearts and

minds of the Russian peasantry. Some, like Leo

Tolstoy, tried to combat the chapbooks by pro-

ducing a special “people’s literature,” others by

publishing low-priced works from the contempo-

rary literary canon. Literacy committees and zem-

stvos also produced cheap editions of belles lettres

and popular science. The most successful com-

mercial chapbook publisher, Ivan Sytin, began

printing works by Tolstoy and other literary fig-

ures for a mass readership in 1884. The Orthodox

Church, while condemning the harmful influence

of the commercial chapbooks, published inexpen-

sive editions of saints’ lives, prayer books, the

scriptures, religious stories, and even some works

by secular authors. The state also subsidized the

CHAPBOOK LITERATURE

227

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

publication of religious, moralistic, and patriotic

literature for soldiers and the common people.

Chapbooks, like other publications, were sub-

ject to censorship in tsarist Russia. Although the

state was concerned about the potentially subver-

sive impact of commercial chapbooks on the com-

mon people, there was never a special censorship

of publications intended to be read by the lower

classes. The state did, however, impose restrictions

on the titles that were available in libraries and

reading rooms for the common people, or that

could be read to popular audiences. Most restric-

tions were relaxed after the 1905 Revolution, when

the preliminary censorship of publications was

abolished.

During World War I, commercial publishers,

with the encouragement of the state, produced

chapbooks glorifying the exploits of Russian sol-

diers. After the February Revolution brought an end

to the tsarist autocracy, there was a brief upsurge

of often lascivious stories about Rasputin and the

imperial family. Following the October Revolution,

the Bolsheviks nationalized the commercial pub-

lishing houses and suppressed the chapbooks as

part of their effort to transform popular tastes.