Encyclopedia of Russian History

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in St. Petersburg. In 1911, l’Institut Français (a

French institute) was created there to help spread

French culture in Russia. In fact, from the 1890s

onward, France’s cultural presence in Russia was

consistently viewed as an adjunct to its policy of

industrial and commercial implantation.

Following the close of the nineteenth century,

the role of France as a land that welcomed politi-

cal exiles and refugees had a reciprocal influence on

the countries from which they came. When they

returned to Russia, some of these individuals

brought back ideas as well as social, pedagogical,

and political experiences. For example, the experi-

ence acquired by Maxim Kovalevsky (1851–1916),

professor of law and sociology, as the head of the

Ecole supérieure russe des sciences sociales de Paris

(the Russian Advanced School for Social Sciences in

Paris), founded in 1901, served to organize the Uni-

versité populaire Shanyavsky in Moscow (the

Shanyavsky People’s University), founded in 1908.

After the October Revolution of 1917, Paris,

along with Berlin and Prague, was one of the three

principal cities of Russian emigration in Europe. A

hub of intellectual activity from the 1920s onward,

the French capital was among the leading centers

abroad for publishing Russian newspapers and

books, of which a portion subsequently made its

way into Russia, thereby helping to bind the emi-

grant population with Soviet Russians back home.

The suspension of scientific and cultural relations

between the USSR and the rest of the world, start-

ing in the mid-1930s, put an end to this exchange.

The cultural influence of France did not disap-

pear, however. Beginning in 1954, new attempts

were made to bring France and the USSR closer to-

gether, beginning with cultural exchanges. During

that year the Comédie française made a triumphant

tour of the Soviet Union. Later, the trip by General

Charles de Gaulle, in June of 1966, marked the be-

ginning of a time of privileged relations between

the two countries. A joint commission was created

to foster exchange, and numerous cultural agree-

ments were signed, some of which remained in ef-

fect during the early twenty-first century. French

teaching assistants were appointed in Soviet uni-

versities, the teaching of French was expanded at

the secondary school level, and agreements were

signed for the distribution of French films in the

USSR.

In the end, in the perception of the Russian peo-

ple, France has remained the country of the Revo-

lution of 1789 and the homeland of the Rights of

Man. From the 1960s onward, French intellectuals

outside of Russia strengthened this image by sup-

porting the cause of Soviet dissidents. It is again in

the name of human rights that France has at-

tempted, since 1994, to soften the position of the

Russian government with regard to Chechnya.

See also: CATHERINE II; ENLIGHTENMENT, IMPACT OF;

FRANCE, RELATIONS WITH

BIBLIOGRAPHY

De Madariaga, Isabel. (1998). Politics and Culture in Eigh-

teenth-Century Russia. London: Longman.

Kaufman, Peter H. (1994). The Solidarity of a Philosophe:

Diderot, Russia, and the Soviet Union. New York: P.

Lang.

Raeff, Marc. (1994). Political Ideas and Institutions in Im-

perial Russia. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Riasanovsky, Nicholas. (1999). A History of Russia, 6th

ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Shlapentokh, Dmitry. (1996). The French Revolution in

Russian Intellectual Life, 1865–1905. Westport, CT:

Praeger.

Voltaire. (1974). Voltaire and Catherine the Great: Selected

Correspondence. Cambridge, MA: Oriental Research

Partners.

Wesling, Molly W. (2001). Napoleon in Russian Cultural

Mythology. New York: P. Lang.

ARTINE

ESPOULET

FRENCH WAR OF 1812

The French war of 1812 was one of the most de-

cisive conflicts of modern times. Napoleon crossed

the Russian frontier on June 24, 1812, with more

than 650,000 troops, and just a few months later

recrossed the frontier, defeated, with less than one-

tenth of that number. Although winter played a

role in the deaths of tens of thousands of French

soldiers during the retreat, Russia won the cam-

paign through a skillful withdrawal and the care-

ful selection of battlefields. Napoleon contributed to

his own disaster by failing to provide adequately

for an extended campaign in terms both of supplies

and of reinforcements.

Originally Russia had contemplated an invasion

of French-held Poland, but the Russian comman-

der, Mikhail B. Barclay de Tolly, quickly changed

the plan. When Napoleon crossed the frontier,

Barclay de Tolly intended to have his First Army

withdraw to a fortified camp at Drissa, luring

FRENCH WAR OF 1812

523

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

Napoleon’s main body behind it. While Napoleon

attacked the camp, Peter I. Bagration’s Second

Army was to fall on the French rear, destroying

the invading army. The plan was abandoned and

the retreat began when the Russians realized that

Napoleon’s force was more than twice as large as

they had believed.

The Russian armies had been drawn up with a

considerable gap between them, and Napoleon

drove right through it, intending to keep them sep-

arated. Barclay de Tolly and Bagration naturally

wished to link up before they accepted battle, but

were unable to do so before reaching Smolensk in

mid-August. Facing ever-increasing pressure from

Tsar Alexander to fight, Barclay de Tolly prepared

to accept battle supported by Smolensk’s impres-

sive walls. Napoleon, however, attempted to en-

velop the Russian position rather than attack

head-on. As Barclay de Tolly became aware of this

movement, he decided once again that discretion

was the better part of valor and withdrew from

Smolensk rather than risk losing his army.

Frustrated by this continued retreating and also

by the bickering between Barclay de Tolly and

Bagration, neither of whom was prepared to take

orders from the other, Alexander appointed Mikhail

I. Kutuzov as overall commander of what was now

effectively an army group comprising two armies

marching together. Despite Alexander’s continued

prodding, Kutuzov continued the retreat. As he

neared Moscow, he recognized that he would have

to give battle before abandoning Russia’s ancient

capital, and so he selected the field near Borodino,

which he prepared with field fortifications.

Napoleon, chastened by his experience at

Smolensk and desperate for a decisive battle, refused

the advice of his subordinates to envelop the Rus-

sian position at Borodino and on September 7

launched a bloody frontal assault instead. The

Russian army held, and Kutuzov mustered it to

continue its retreat that night. Barely pausing in

Moscow, Kutuzov withdrew to the south in order

to prevent Napoleon from marching into the rich

fields of Ukraine to replenish his supplies, and also

to protect Russian reinforcements coming from

those regions. Napoleon occupied Moscow on Sep-

tember 14 and remained in the city for more than

a month before abandoning it on October 18. Dur-

ing the French occupation, the city was destroyed

almost completely in an enormous fire, although

the exact cause of the blaze remains unclear and

controversial to this day.

Having decided to leave Moscow when Alexan-

der refused to make any move toward peace,

Napoleon tried to march southward but found Ku-

tuzov’s army arrayed against him at Malo-

yaroslavets. The bloody battle there on October

24–25 forced Napoleon back to the Warsaw-

Moscow highway along which he had originally

invaded, and he began the long retreat by the way

he had come.

Napoleon’s retreating forces suffered horribly.

They had eaten most of the supplies along the road

on their inward march, and the Russians had de-

liberately pursued a scorched-earth policy to de-

stroy the remaining supplies. The burning of

Moscow had also deprived Napoleon of valuable

supplies, and when Kutuzov cut him off from

Ukraine, the fate of the Grande Armée was sealed.

All the way back to the Russian border, peasants,

Cossacks, and Russian regular troops harried the

French, who died in droves. The Russians attempted

to cut off the French retreat altogether at the Bat-

tle of the Berezina on November 27–28. Although

Napoleon managed to batter his way through, his

casualties were staggering. When the remnants of

the French army struggled across the Russian fron-

tier, one of the most powerful armies ever assem-

bled to that point in history had been virtually

wiped out.

It is customary to credit the Russian winter

with the destruction of the French army, but this

notion is greatly exaggerated. The most critical

events in the campaign—Napoleon’s initial opera-

tions, the maneuver at Smolensk, the Battle of

Borodino, the seizure of Moscow, and even the Bat-

tle of Maloyaroslavets—were fought before hard

cold and snow set in. The Russian army was forced

to confront the vast French force on its own with-

out climatological aids for four months, and liter-

ally hundreds of thousands of French soldiers

perished in that time. The hard winter that fol-

lowed merely added to the misery and completed

the destruction of a French force that had already

been defeated by Russian arms.

The invasion of Russia set the stage for the col-

lapse of Napoleon’s hegemony in Europe. In the

wake of Napoleon’s flight, the Prussian auxiliary

corps he had forced to advance into the Baltic States

made peace with the Russia on its own accord and

committed Prussia to fight against France. As Rus-

sian forces crossed their own frontier and marched

westward, Austria, Britain, and Sweden were per-

suaded to join the now-victorious Russian army,

FRENCH WAR OF 1812

524

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

and the final coalition against Napoleon was born.

By catalyzing this last great and victorious coali-

tion, the War of 1812 marked a profound turning

point in European history and also in Russian his-

tory. Pursuing the French back to France, Russian

troops found themselves in Paris itself. Alexander

committed himself absolutely to a prominent role

in the affairs of the entire European continent.

Russian soldiers who had the unique chance to see

the French capital, on the other hand, would ulti-

mately become so frustrated with Alexander’s

conservative regime as to stage the Decembrist Re-

bellion in 1825. The costs of this greatest of Rus-

sian victories were, in every respect, staggering.

See also: BORODINO, BATTLE OF; DECEMBRIST MOVEMENT

AND REBELLION; FRANCE, RELATIONS WITH; HOLY

ALLIANCE; KUTUZOV, MIKHAIL ILARIONOVICH;

QUADRUPLE ALLIANCE AND QUINTUPLE ALLIANCE

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Duffy, Christopher. (1973). Borodino and the War of 1812.

New York: Scribner.

Tarle, Evgeny Viktorovich. (1942). Napoleon’s Invasion of

Russia, 1812. New York: Oxford University Press.

REDERICK

W. K

AGAN

FRONTIER FORTIFICATIONS

Fortified lines played a major role in Muscovy’s

southern frontier defense strategy. The great scale

of these fortifications projects testified to the Mus-

covite state’s considerable powers of resource mo-

bilization.

The defense of Muscovy’s southern frontier re-

lied heavily upon long fortified lines linking garri-

son towns and serving as stations for the corps of

the southern frontier field army. These lines were

never intended to be impermeable walls keeping out

the Tatars, but rather a supporting infrastructure

for reconnaissance patrols, signaling, and corps

movements beyond or behind the defense line. The

gradual extension of these defense lines deeper into

the steppe over the course of the late sixteenth and

seventeenth centuries reflected the Muscovite

state’s successes in the military colonization of its

southern frontier and in its command and control

of much larger field armies.

To stop the Crimean Tatars from invading cen-

tral Muscovy, it had become necessary by 1512 to

station several thousand troops along the Bank Line

(Bereg), an especially vulnerable 250-kilometer

(155.3-mile) stretch of the Oka between Kolomna

and Kaluga, every spring and summer. By cen-

tury’s end the Abatis Line (Zasechnaya cherta), an

additional network of forest abatis and fortifica-

tions almost 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) in span,

had arisen another 100 kilometers (62 miles) far-

ther south; the field army was restationed along it,

providing central Muscovy with greater defense in

depth and also encouraging military colonization

of the forest-steppe zone. From 1637 to 1658 a

new Belgorod Line was built along most of the

southern edge of the forest-steppe, from Akhtyrka

in northeastern Ukraine to Chelnavsk; it consisted

of earthen fortifications built in the new Dutch

manner, as well as abatis, and linked twenty-five

garrison towns. From 1646 it became the new line

of deployment for the corps of the southern field

army as well as a place d’armes for aggressive op-

erations down the Don (against the Crimean

Khanate and the Ottoman fortress of Azov) and in

Ukraine (against the Commonwealth during the

Thirteen Years War). In 1679–1680 most of the

steppe along the Northern Donets and Oskol rivers

was enclosed behind yet another new line, the

Izyuma Line, another 160 kilometers (99.42 miles)

southeast of the Belgorod Line.

See also: CRIMEAN TATARS; MILITARY, IMPERIAL ERA;

MUSCOVY; THIRTEEN YEARS’ WAR

RIAN

AVIES

FRUNZE, MIKHAIL VASILIEVICH

(1885–1925), military leader and theoretician.

Mikhail Vasilievich Frunze was a native of

Semirchesk oblast, the son of an orderly, and a

student in the Petersburg Polytechnic Institute,

from which he failed to graduate. He joined the so-

cial democratic movement (1904) and led strikes

in Ivanovo (May 1905). Arrested and twice sen-

tenced to death, he was exiled instead and managed

to escape. He did party work in Belorussia (1917),

was head of the militia in Minsk, and was a mem-

ber of the Party committee of the West Front.

Frunze was head of the Party Soviet in Shuia (Sep-

tember 1917). Opposed to the Treaty of Brest-

Litovsk, he joined the “Left-Communists.” Frunze

FRUNZE, MIKHAIL VASILIEVICH

525

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

was military commissar of Yaroslavl Military Dis-

trict. From February 1919, he was at the front as

commander of the Fourth and Turkestan Armies,

then he was commander of the south wing of the

East Front, fighting against Kolchak. From July

1919, Frunze was commander of the East Front de-

ployed in the Urals, and from September 1919, he

commanded the Turkestan Front. From September

1920, Frunze served as commander of the South

Front deployed in Crimea and accepted the surren-

der of Pyotr Wrangel’s remaining forces in the

Crimea, who were later massacred by the Party and

Cheka operatives, despite his disapproval. From De-

cember 1920, he headed the Revolutionary Military

Soviet (RVS) and commanded the Crimea and

Ukraine forces, which embarked on various puni-

tive operations. He was elected to the Party Central

Committee (1921), appointed as Deputy People’s

Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs (March

1924), and later (April 1924) served as the Chief of

Staff of the Red Army. Frunze was a candidate

member of the Politburo (1924). He authored a

number of studies, including a guide on reorga-

nizing the Red Army (1921), on military doctrine

(1921, 1924), and on Vladimir Lenin and the Red

Army (1925). He led the military reforms in

1924–1925. Frunze’s ideas, formed in bruising bat-

tles with Leon Trotsky, involved a “unified doc-

trine” and setting up of a bureaucratically

structured Red Army high command to meet

wartime as well as peacetime needs. The necessity

for an industrial defense base, as well as machin-

ery for rapid mobilization, was also emphasized.

These views were opposed by those who favored a

militia-type Red Army.

On March 11, 1924, Frunze was appointed as

Trotsky’s deputy, and on January 1, 1925, Joseph

Stalin named him Commissar of Military and Naval

Affairs, replacing Trotsky. Frunze’s death, as a re-

sult of an operation recommended by Stalin, has

given rise to a number of claims that his demise

was no accident and that it gave Stalin the oppor-

tunity to replace him with Kliment Voroshilov,

about whose loyalty there was little doubt. Frunze

is buried on Red Square. His son, fighter pilot Timur

Frunze, was killed during the Battle of Stalingrad.

See also: MILITARY, SOVIET AND POST-SOVIET

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Gareev, M.A. (1987). M.V. Frunze, Military Theorist.

Washington, DC: Pergamon-Brassey’s.

Von Hagen, Mark (1990). Soldiers in a Proletarian Lead-

ership: The Red Army and the Soviet Socialist State.

Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

ICHAEL

ARRISH

FULL ECONOMIC ACCOUNTING

In the Soviet economy, industrial enterprises were

treated as independent units from a financial man-

agement and economic accountability perspective.

Under the system of full economic accounting

(polny khozrachet) introduced by Mikhail Gor-

bachev, each enterprise was to be self-financing in

the long run, meeting wage payments and other

production costs from sales revenues. Investment

requirements identified in the techpromfinplan were

to be met from enterprise profits. Full economic ac-

counting was a cornerstone of perestroika, re-

garded as an important measure to improve

enterprise operations.

The khozrachet system used by Soviet enter-

prises during the 1980s was not new, but the

attention paid to enterprise autonomy and ac-

countability during the period of perestroika ap-

peared more serious. Under the system of full

economic accounting, unprofitable or “negative-

value-added” firms were to go out of business ei-

ther through a bankruptcy proceeding or by

another enterprise taking over the loss-making

firm’s assets. Prior to perestroika, the khozrachet

system gave lip service to self-financing and eco-

nomic accountability, but in practice, loss-making

firms routinely received subsidies from central au-

thorities or industrial ministries redistributing

profits from “winners” to “losers.”

Gorbachev’s full economic accounting system

was supposed to end the automatic subsidies pro-

vided to loss-makers. It appeared to be the Soviet

answer to the question of how to eliminate the

“soft budget constraint” described by Janos Kornai

as the primary contributing source of scarcity in a

planned economy. However, centrally determined

prices for inputs received by the firm and output

sold by the firm made calculations of cost, revenue,

and profit somewhat meaningless from an effi-

ciency or economic accountability perspective. Cen-

trally determined prices did not reflect scarcity, nor

did they signal accurate information about the op-

eration or performance of the Soviet industrial en-

terprise. Consequently, basing the full economic

accounting system on these prices, in an environ-

FULL ECONOMIC ACCOUNTING

526

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

ment of persistent and pervasive shortages, pro-

vided little opportunity to maneuver Soviet enter-

prises away from the production of shoddy goods

and toward the production of goods that ade-

quately captured the specifications or preferences

of customers. Moreover, as planners maintained

the bonus system that linked substantial monetary

payments to the fulfillment of output targets

rather than cost reductions, enterprise managers

continued to over-order inputs and hoard labor in

order to achieve the planned output targets. As

planners continued to set output plan targets high

relative to the firm’s productive capacity, enterprise

managers continued to disregard cost in efforts to

fulfill planned output targets. In short, policies pur-

sued by planners sustained the outcome that the

extension to full economic accounting was to re-

place. The absence of bankruptcy law and estab-

lished bankruptcy proceedings, plus the lack of a

mechanism for one firm to acquire the assets of a

second firm, also undermined the effectiveness of

full economic accounting in improving enterprise

operations.

See also: KORNAI, JANOS; PERESTROIKA; TECHPROMFIN-

PLAN

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Gorbachev, Mikhail. (1987). Perestroika: New Thinking for

Our Country and the World. New York: Harper &

Row.

Gregory, Paul R. (1990). Restructuring the Soviet Economic

Bureaucracy. New York: Cambridge University Press.

USAN

J. L

INZ

FUNDAMENTAL LAWS OF 1906

The Fundamental Laws, a 203-article compilation

of existing laws on supreme rule, were first pub-

lished in the Set of Laws of the Russian Empire

(Svod zakonov Rossyskoi impery) in 1832. Un-

changed since the edition published in 1892, they

had to be revised in order to carry out the princi-

ples set forth in the October Manifesto of 1905.

The revision was based on the principles estab-

lished by the Manifesto of 1906, which made the

State Council a second legislative chamber with the

right to veto acts by the State Duma, thereby es-

tablishing that the Duma did not have the right

to change the Fundamental Laws. The new revi-

sion of the Fundamental Laws was hurriedly ac-

cepted before the upcoming election of the Duma.

Count Sergei Witte, one of the initiators of the Oc-

tober Manifesto and of the introduction of national

representatives into Russian politics, warned that

if the revision was issued before the election, the

Duma would become the Constitutional Assembly,

and this would lead to violence and the end of the

new order.

There were three drafts of the Fundamental

Laws: one liberal, one conservative, and one “mod-

erate” (in fact closer to liberal). The latter, created

at the State Chancellery by the deputy state secre-

tary, Peter Kharitonov, was adopted as basis for the

future document. The Japanese, Prussian, and Aus-

tro-Hungarian constitutions were studied in the

process of creating and compiling the laws, as was

a draft prepared by the Union of Liberation and

published abroad. The draft prepared by the State

Chancellery was discussed at five meetings of the

Council of Ministers in March of 1906 under the

chairmanship of Witte and was completed in a

spirit of fortifying conservative principles. Such ar-

ticles as “the restriction to punish in ways other

than the court’s ruling” and “the respected secrecy

of private correspondence” were removed, and the

tsar’s prerogatives were strengthened. The project

and its revisions were discussed at meetings on

April 1906 in Tsarskoye Selo under the chairman-

ship of Tsar Nicholas II. After he approved the new

edition of the Fundamental Laws, it was published

on May 10 (April 27 O.S.), 1906, the day the State

Duma opened. The new edition, containing 223 ar-

ticles, transformed Russia into a constitutional

monarchy.

Whereas the first article of the earlier version

of the Fundamental Laws stated that “The Russian

emperor is an autocratic monarch with unlimited

power,” article 4 now gave the tsar supreme au-

tocratic power. The term “unlimited” was removed,

and “autocratic” (samoderzhavnyi) was defined as

declaring the independence of the country and the

monarch. A special note by the historian Sergei

Knazkov proved that the word “autocracy” had

been used in this sense during the seventeenth cen-

tury and had only assumed the meaning of un-

limited power during the eighteenth. The new

article proclaimed the unity and indivisibility of the

Russian Empire. It noted that Finland was an “in-

separable part” of Russia, but “was governed by

special institutions on the basis of being a special

legislative authority.” Russian was declared the of-

ficial language of the empire, and its use was re-

quired in the army, navy, and all state and civil

institutions.

FUNDAMENTAL LAWS OF 1906

527

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

From then on, no law could be passed without

the approval of the State Council and the State

Duma. Members of the Duma were elected for five

years. The State Council and the Duma could leg-

islate on matters not covered by the Fundamental

Laws. The chief innovation was the inclusion into

the Fundamental Laws of articles that guaranteed

identity rights and civil freedoms, specifically the

protection of identity and residence, freedom of res-

idence, activity, movement, protection of posses-

sions, freedom of speech, press, unions, assembly,

and religion. The declared rights and freedoms did

not include Jews, for whom residential restrictions

(the Jewish Pale of Settlement) and restrictions on

civil service positions still existed.

These concessions notwithstanding, the tsar re-

tained an enormous amount of power. He had the

right of the legislative initiative, including the ex-

clusive right to initiate revisions of the Fundamen-

tal Laws. Without his approval, laws approved by

the legislative chambers could not be passed. More-

over, in emergency situations the tsar could pro-

mulgate laws when the Duma was not in session

(article 87). These would be nullified, however, un-

less ratified by the Duma within two months. The

tsar had supreme control of the country, includ-

ing control over foreign policy, the power to de-

clare war and peace, supreme command of the

armed forces, the right to mint coins, the appoint-

ment and dissolution of the government, and the

unlimited right to declare a state of war or emer-

gency. The tsar had power over the Council of Min-

isters and could hold them accountable.

The State Council and the Duma were to be

convened annually. The tsar determined the time

span of their yearly activities and the duration of

the “holidays” for legislative institutions. He ap-

pointed half of the members of the State Council

and had the right to dissolve the Duma before the

five-year mark. If he did so, he had to announce a

date for new elections to the Duma. Nicholas II used

this right twice, dissolving the first and second Du-

mas. In the second case, on June 3 (16), 1907, the

electoral law was changed. This was a violation of

the Fundamental Laws, because the new electoral

law was not presented to the legislative institutions.

Under the second revision of the Fundamental

Laws, Russia became a dualistic monarchy (Duma

monarchy).

See also: DUMA; NICHOLAS II; OCTOBER MANIFESTO;

STATE COUNCIL; WITTE, SERGEI YULIEVICH

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ascher, Abraham. (1992). The Revolution of 1905: Au-

thority Restored. Stanford, CA: Stanford University

Press.

Harcave, Sidney, tr. and ed. (1990). The Memoirs of Count

Witte. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.

Mehlinger, Howard D., and Tompson, John M. (1972).

Count Witte and the Tsarist Government in the 1905

Revolution. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Szeftel, Marc. (1976). The Russian Constitution of April 23,

1906: Political Institutions of the Duma Monarchy.

Brussels: Editions de la Librarie encyclopédique.

LEG

UDNITSKII

FUNDED COMMODITIES

Funded commodities were a category of commodi-

ties considered so critical to the success of the an-

nual plan that allocation was tightly controlled by

Gosplan and the USSR Council of Ministers.

Soviet central planning aspired to comprehen-

sive coverage of the supply and demand of all com-

modities and services in the economy. As there were

millions of transactions in an economy the size of

the USSR, this was not a realistic ambition. The

system of materials balances was designed to re-

place market forces of supply and demand in at-

taining equilibrium in each market. This enormous

task was subdivided by category in order to de-

centralize the burden of achieving balances to var-

ious administrative and territorial planning units.

Funded commodities represented a restricted list

of critical commodities that were under the direct

control and allocation of the Gosplan and required

explicit approval by the USSR Council of Ministers.

The number of commodities in this category var-

ied considerably over time, reflecting various reor-

ganizations of planning procedures, changes in

priorities, and attempts to reform the process. Ac-

cording to Paul Gregory and Robert Stuart, the

number of funded commodities varied from 277

in the beginning in 1928 to as many as 2,390.

During the 1980s, the number was approximately

2,000. About 75,000 other commodities were also

specifically planned and controlled either by Gos-

plan in conjunction with various centralized sup-

ply organizations, or by the ministries without

explicit central oversight.

See also: FONDODERZHATELI; GOSPLAN

FUNDED COMMODITIES

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Gregory, Paul R., and Stuart, C. Robert. (1990). Soviet

Economic Structure and Performance. New York:

HarperCollins.

Nove, Alec. (1965). The Soviet Economy, An Introduction,

rev. ed. New York: Praeger.

AMES

R. M

ILLAR

FUTURISM

A term coined by the Italian poet Filippo Tom-

maso Marinetti (1876–1944), Futurism empha-

sized discarding the static and irrelevant art of the

past. It celebrated change, originality, and inno-

vation in culture and society and glorified the new

technology of the twentieth century, with em-

phasis on dynamism, speed, energy, and power.

Russian Futurism, founded by Velimir Khlebnikov

(1885–1922), a poet and a mystic, and Vladimir

Mayakovsky (1893–1930), the leading poet of

Russian Revolution of 1917 and of the early Soviet

period, went beyond its Italian model with a focus

on a revolutionary social and political outlook. In

1912 the Russian Futurists issued the manifesto “A

Slap in the Face of Public Taste” that advocated the

ideas of Italian futurism and attacked Alexander

Pushkin, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Leo Tolstoy.

With the Revolution of 1917, the Russian Futur-

ists attempted to dominate postrevolutionary cul-

ture in hopes of creating a new art integrating all

aspects of daily life within a vision of total world

transformation; artists would respond to a call to

transcend and remake reality through a revolu-

tionized aesthetic, to break down the barriers that

had heretofore alienated the old art and the old re-

ality. Russian Futurism argued that art, by elicit-

ing predetermined emotions, could organize the

will of the masses for action toward desired goals.

In 1923 Mayakovsky cofounded with Osip Brik the

Dadaistic journal LEF. Soviet avant-garde architects

led by Nikolai Ladovsky were also highly influenced

by Futurism and the theory that humanity’s

“world understanding” becomes a driving force de-

termining human action only when it is fused with

world-perception, defined as “the sum of man’s

emotional values . . . created by sympathy or re-

vulsion, friendship or animosity, joy or sorrow,

fear or courage.” Only by sensing the world

through the “feeling of matter” could one under-

stand, and thus be driven to change, the world. The

Futurists were initially favored by Anatoly Lu-

nacharsky, the Soviet commissar of education, and

obtained important cultural posts. But by 1930

they had lost influence within the government and

within most of the literary community.

See also: LUNACHARSKY, ANATOLY VASILIEVICH; MAYA-

KOVSKY, VLADIMIR VLADIMIROVICH; OCTOBER REVO-

LUTION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Janecek, Gerald. (1996). Zaum: The Transrational Poetry

of Russian Futurism. San Diego, CA: San Diego State

University Press.

Markov, Vladimir. (1968). Russian Futurism: A History.

Berkeley: University of California Press.

UGH

D. H

UDSON

FYODOR ALEXEYEVICH

(1661–1682), tsar of Russia, February 9, 1676 to

May 7, 1682.

Fyodor was the ninth child of Tsar Alexis and

his first wife, Maria Miloslavskaya. He became heir

to the throne following the death of an elder brother

in 1670. Fyodor is said to have studied Latin and

Polish with the Belarusian court poet Simeon Polot-

sky, but sources indicate that his education was

predominantly traditional, with some modern ele-

ments. Just fourteen on his accession in 1676, Fy-

odor ruled without a regent, but was supported by

a number of advisors and personal favorites, no-

tably his chamberlain Ivan Yazykov and the broth-

ers Alexei and Mikhail Likhachev. Less intimate

with the tsar, but highly influential, was Prince

Vasily Golitsyn. Members of Fyodor’s mother’s

family, the Miloslavskys, were less prominent, al-

though they succeeded early in the reign in secur-

ing the banishment of Artamon Matveyev and

several members of the rival Naryshkin clan. There

were power struggles throughout the reign. There

were also rumors that Fyodor’s ambitious sister

Sophia Alekseyevna regularly attended his sickbed.

In fact, Fyodor, although delicate, was by no means

the hopeless invalid depicted by some historians.

Records show that he regularly participated in cer-

emonies and presided over councils. He married

twice. His first wife Agafia Grushetskaya (of part-

Polish extraction) and her newborn son died in July

1681. In February 1682 he married the noble-

woman Marfa Apraksina.

FYODOR ALEXEYEVICH

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

The central event of Fyodor’s reign was war

with Turkey (1676–1681), precipitated by Turkish

and Tatar incursions into Ukraine, compelling Rus-

sia to abandon the fort of Chigirin on the Dnieper.

The treaty of Bakhchisarai (1681) established a

twenty-year truce. War determined economic pol-

icy. In 1678 a major land survey was conducted in

order to reassess the population’s tax obligations,

providing the only reliable, if partial, population

figures for the whole century. In 1679 the house-

hold rather than land became the basis for taxa-

tion. Provincial reforms included abolition of some

elected posts and wider powers for military gover-

nors. Fyodor’s major reform was the abolition of

the Code of Precedence (mestnichestvo) in 1682. An

associated scheme to separate civil and military of-

fices and create permanent posts was shelved, al-

legedly after the patriarch warned that such

officials might accumulate independent power. In

1681 and 1682 a major church council sought to

raise the caliber of priests and intensified the per-

secution of Old Believers.

Fyodor had his portrait painted, encouraged the

introduction of part-singing from Kiev, and ap-

proved a charter for an academy modeled on the

Kiev Academy (implemented only in the late

1680s). Polish fashions and poetry became popu-

lar with courtiers, but traditionalists regarded

“Latin” novelties with suspicion. Tsar Alexis’s the-

atre was closed down, and foreign fashions were

banned. Historians remain undecided whether Fy-

odor was a sickly young nonentity manipulated by

unscrupulous favorites or whether he showed

promise of becoming a strong ruler. His reign is

best viewed as a continuation of Russia’s involve-

ment in international affairs and of mildly West-

ernizing trends, especially via Ukraine and Poland.

See also: ALEXEI MIKHAILOVICH; GOLITSYN, VASILY

VASILIEVICH; PETER I; SOPHIA

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bushkovitch, Paul. (2001). Peter the Great: The Struggle

for Power, 1671–1725. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge

University Press.

Soloviev, Sergei. (1989). History of Russia: Vol. 25, Rebel-

lion and Reform: Fedor and Sophia, 1682–1689, ed. and

tr. Lindsey Hughes. Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic In-

ternational Press.

INDSEY

UGHES

FYODOR II

(1589–1605), Tsar of Russia and son of Boris Go-

dunov.

Fyodor Borisovich Godunov was born in 1589

and eventually became tsar. His father, Boris Go-

dunov, was the regent of the mentally retarded Tsar

Fyodor I. Fyodor Godunov’s mother, Maria, was the

daughter of Tsar Ivan IV’s favorite, Malyuta Sku-

ratov (the notorious boss of the oprichnina, the tsar’s

hand-picked military and administrative elite). Upon

the death of the childless Tsar Fyodor I in 1598, Boris

Godunov became tsar, and Fyodor Borisovich be-

came heir to the throne. Contemporaries described

young Fyodor as handsome, athletic, and kind. Like

his older sister Ksenya, Fyodor was well educated

and learned from his father the art of government

as he grew up. Fyodor was also an avid student of

cartography, and he is credited with drawing a small

map of Moscow, included on a well-known Dutch

map of Russia published in 1614.

In April 1605 Tsar Boris died, and Fyodor was

proclaimed Tsar Fyodor II. Although well prepared

to rule, the sixteen-year-old tsar was soon over-

whelmed by the civil war his father had been fight-

ing against supporters of someone claiming to be

Dmitry of Uglich (the youngest son of Tsar Ivan

IV). Several of Fyodor’s courtiers immediately be-

gan plotting to overthrow him, but it was the re-

bellion of the tsar’s army on May 7, 1605, that

sealed the fate of the Godunov dynasty. Tsar Fyo-

dor II was toppled in a bloodless popular uprising

in Moscow on June 1, 1605. Several days later he

and his mother were strangled to death, and it was

falsely reported that they had committed suicide.

Almost no one mourned the death of Fyodor II;

Moscow was too busy celebrating the arrival of

Tsar Dmitry.

See also: DMITRY OF UGLICH; FYODOR ALEXEYEVICH; GO-

DUNOV, BORIS FYODOROVICH; IVAN IV; OPRICHNINA

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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 (1985). “The Rebellion in Moscow

and the Fall of the Godunov Dynasty.” Soviet Stud-

ies in History 24:137–54.

HESTER

UNNING

FYODOR II

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

FYODOR IVANOVICH

(1557–1598), Tsar of Russia reigned 1584–1598.

Fyodor Ivanovich was the second son of Ivan

IV (“The Terrible” or Ivan Grozny). Ascending the

throne in 1584, three years after his father killed

his older brother Ivan in a fit of rage, Fyodor

Ivanovich was nevertheless too mentally deficient

to govern. His brother-in-law, Boris Godunov (the

brother of his wife Irene), ruled instead as regent.

Fyodor did not have children and thus was the last

descendant of Rurik to occupy the Russian throne.

Fyodor’s father Ivan IV had the longest reign

in Russian history, from 1533 to 1584, and the

first half of his reign was marked by constructive

achievements in both foreign and domestic policy.

His defeat of the Tartars of Kazan (1552) and

Astrakhan (1556) opened the way southward

and eastward to Russian expansion. He also wel-

comed the British explorer Richard Chancellor in

1553–1554 and established commercial relations

with England. By 1560 Ivan IV had established the

power and legitimacy of the tsar. He authorized re-

forms in the army and even established a consul-

tative body known as the zemsky sobor to debate

issues and provide advice (although only when he

solicited it).

After the death in 1560 of his first wife Ana-

stasia—whom he suspected had been poisoned—

Ivan IV became moody and violent. Withdrawing

from the boyars and the church, he insisted on per-

sonal control, exercised through the establishment

of the oprichnina—the private police force he could

order to kill his personal enemies. In 1591, just

seven years after he killed his oldest son, Ivan’s

youngest son Dmitry died under mysterious cir-

cumstances, possibly by the hand of Boris Go-

dunov, a member of the lesser nobility who had

become Ivan’s protegé. In 1584 when Ivan’s sec-

ond son Fyodor Ivanovich became tsar, Godunov

shrewdly exploited Fyodor’s feeble-mindedness to

assume de facto power as regent. When Fyodor died

in 1598, the zemsky sobor elected Godunov as tsar.

Godunov was an effective regent and tsar. Al-

though he did nothing to ease the burden on the

peasants (issuing a decree in 1601 limiting their

rights to move from one estate to another), Go-

dunov made strides in economic development and

colonization of Siberia. He also established the pa-

triarchate in 1589. Before then the Russian church

recognized the patriarch of Constantinople (now Is-

tanbul). Under Godunov’s tutelage, Russia waged

successful wars against the Tatars (1591) and Swe-

den (1595).

Plots, intrigues, and natural disasters soon un-

dermined Godunov’s power, however. A stranger

appeared, claiming to be Ivan’s youngest son,

Dmitry (the first of three “False Dmitrys”). A

famine from 1601 to 1603 stimulated rural unrest

and opposition to Godunov’s rule. Godunov was

killed in 1605 while suppressing a revolt during the

advance on Moscow of one of the False Dmitrys.

His death ushered in a “Time of Troubles” (Smut-

noye vremya), which lasted until the establishment

of the Romanov dynasty in 1613.

See also: DMITRY, FALSE; GODUNOV, BORIS FYODOR-

OVICH; IVAN IV; TIME OF TROUBLES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bobrick, Benson. (1987). Fearful Majesty: The Life and

Reign of Ivan the Terrible. New York: Putnam.

Grey, Ian. (1973). Boris Godunov: The Tragic Tsar. New

York: Scribner.

Lamb, Harold. (1948). The March of Muscovy: Ivan the Ter-

rible and the Growth of the Russian Empire,

1400–1648. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.

Yanov, Alexander. (1981). The Origins of Autocracy: Ivan

the Terrible in Russian History. Berkeley: University

of California Press.

OHANNA

RANVILLE

FYODOROV, BORIS GRIGORIEVICH

(b. 1958), economist, deputy prime minister

(1992–1993), finance minister (1990, 1993), ad-

vocate of liberal economic reform.

Boris Fyodorov, an ambitious young economist

who served briefly as deputy prime minister, found

a business career more fruitful than politics. Fyo-

dorov graduated from the Moscow Institute of Fi-

nance and went on to earn candidate and doctor’s

degrees at Moscow State University (1985) and the

USA/Canada Institute (1990). From 1980 to 1987

he worked at Gosbank, and then at the Institute of

World Economy and International Relations. He was

part of the team led by Grigory Yavlinsky that pre-

pared the Five-Hundred-Day Plan in 1990. In July

1990 he became finance minister in the Russian Fed-

eration government, but resigned in December. From

April 1991 to October 1992 he worked for the Eu-

ropean Bank for Reconstruction and Development,

FYODOROV, BORIS GRIGORIEVICH

531

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

and then spent two months as Russian director at

the World Bank. In December 1992 he became

deputy prime minister in Boris Yeltsin’s cabinet, tak-

ing on the job of finance minister in March 1993.

In December 1993 he was elected to the State Duma

from a Moscow constituency as a member of Yegor

Gaidar’s Russia’s Choice party.

Fyodorov fell out with Prime Minister Viktor

Chernomyrdin in January 1994, citing frustration

with weak monetary and fiscal discipline. He then

formed a liberal parliamentary fraction, Union of

December 12, and in 1995 created his own party,

Forward Russia, which mixed advocacy of market

reform with patriotic slogans, including support

for the war in Chechnya. He was reelected to the

Duma in December 1995, famously publishing

a book of blank pages entitled “The Economic

Achievements of the Chernomyrdin Government.”

From May to September 1998 he headed the State

Tax Administration, but his political career did not

progress. In subsequent years he remained a promi-

nent advocate of further liberal reforms and a de-

fender of minority shareholder interests. In 2000

he was elected a member of the board of Gazprom

and Unified Energy Systems, the two largest com-

panies in Russia.

See also: CHERNOMYRDIN, VIKTOR STEPANOVICH; FIVE-

HUNDRED-DAY PLAN; GAIDAR, YEGOR TIMUROVICH

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Kranz, Patricia Kranz. (1998). “No Tax Man Ever Had It

Tougher.” Business Week 3585:51.

ETER

UTLAND

FYODOROV, IVAN

(c. 1510–1583), the most celebrated among print-

ers in old Rus.

Ivan Fyoderov (also called Ivan Fyodorovich,

Fyodorov syn, Moskvitin, and drukar Moskvitin)

was the initiator of printing in Muscovy and

Ukraine, and was a printer also in Belarus. He pro-

duced the first printed Church Slavonic Bible (the

“Ostroh Bible” of 1580–1581), the first Russian (or

other East Slavic) textbook (Bukvar, 1574), and the

first printed Russian alphabetical subject index, cal-

endar, and poem. He was an accomplished crafts-

man in numerous trades, and a man of broad vision

and great persistence. Altogether, Ivan played an

important role in the promotion of literacy and

Eastern Orthodox confessional unity, and he in-

troduced a high level of content, design, and crafts-

manship into a critically needed profession.

Born sometime around 1510 in Muscovy, he

studied at Krakow University, where he probably

received training in Greek and Latin, and from

which he graduated in 1532. Subsequently, he

worked as deacon in the St. Nikola Gostunsky

church in the Moscow Kremlin, serving from some

time after 1533 until 1565. He was selected by Tzar

Ivan IV “Grozny” to initiate an official printing

press in Moscow where, together with his partner

Petr Mstislavets, he printed books that were needed

for an expanding Russian Orthodox Church. These

included the first dated Russian imprint, the Apos-

tol of 1563–1564, and two editions of the Chasovnik

(Horologion, 1565). Several anonymous Moscow

editions from the immediately preceding period (c.

1553–1563) are also generally ascribed to Ivan. His

Moscow activity was cut short by what he de-

FYODOROV, IVAN

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

Ivan Fyodorov, the first Russian printer. Painting by Alexander