Encyclopedia of Russian History

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office. A surprise encounter with the future tsar

Alexander Nikolayevich (later Alexander II) led to

his transfer to the city of Vladimir. There he found

work as a journalist, and later received permission

to reside in St. Petersburg. This, however, was soon

followed by another period of exile that lasted un-

til 1842. Meanwhile, Herzen’s study and propaga-

tion of Hegelian philosophy became the cornerstone

of his debates and intellectual alliances with radi-

cal Westernizers such as Vissarion Grigorievich Be-

linsky, moderates such as Timofey Nikolayevich

Granovsky, and the early Slavophiles. He estab-

lished himself as a prolific writer on issues such as

the perils of excess specialization of knowledge, the

promises and defaults of utopian socialism exem-

plified by Robert Owen (1771–1858) and Charles

Fourier (1772–1837), the libertarian anarchism of

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865), and, most of

all, the purportedly socialist promise of the Russ-

ian peasant commune. This latter subject became

the centerpiece of his thought and worldview; as

set forth in his key work, From the Other Shore

(1847–1848, coinciding with the appearance of

Marx’s Communist Manifesto), Herzen laid out the

key arguments of Russian populism, arguing that

the primordial collective morality of the commune

must be preserved against the inroads of capital-

ism, and extolling Russia’s opportunity to overtake

the West on the path of social progress toward a

just and equitable organization of society, without

having to pass through the capitalist stage. Pop-

ulism, as envisioned by Herzen, was to become one

of the two main currents of Russia’s revolutionary

thought, alongside with Marxism. Each of these

philosophical strains cross-fertilized and competed

with the other.

In 1847, urged by Ogarev from abroad to es-

cape the dictatorial regime of Nicholas I, Herzen

managed to overcome political obstacles to his em-

igration and leave Russia, as it later turned out,

forever. He traveled across continental Europe, wit-

nessed the failure of the French Revolution of 1848,

and invested in a radical newspaper edited by

Proudhon that was soon to be shut down. He de-

veloped a bitter critique of European capitalism,

which he denounced for its Philistine depravity and

wickedness. In his view, even the promise of so-

cialism was hardly a cure for corruption of what

one would call today the consumer society. This

new outlook reinforced the Russo-centric element

of his populism (although never reconciling him

with Russian domestic oppression), and was re-

flected in his major writings of the period, includ-

ing Letters from France and Italy, published over the

period from 1847 to 1854; On the Development of

Revolutionary Ideas in Russia, published in 1851;

and Russian People and Socialism, published in 1851.

In 1852 Herzen moved from Nice to London,

which became his home until the end of his life. He

set up the first publishing house devoted to Russ-

ian political dissent, printing revolutionary leaflets,

his journal Polyarnaya zvezda (Polar Star), and, fi-

nally, his pivotal periodical, Kolokol (The Bell),

which he published between 1857 and 1867. This

brought Herzen great fame in Russia, where the

liberal atmosphere of Alexander II’s Great Reforms

allowed Herzen’s works to be distributed, albeit il-

licitly, across the country. Kolokol’s initial agenda

advocated the emancipation of the serfs and played

a major role in shaping social attitudes such that

emancipation became inevitable.

Although living in London, Herzen often spoke

out publicly on key issues of the day, addressing

his remarks directly to Tsar Alexander II, at times

positioning himself as a mediator between the au-

thorities and the liberal and radical elements of

Russian society, but identifying firmly with the lat-

ter. After 1861, however, his émigré politics were

rapidly overtaken by growing radicalism within

Russia, and he was increasingly treated with con-

descension by the younger activists as being out of

touch with the new realities. The crackdown on the

Polish rebellion by tsarist troops in 1863 and the

ensuing conservative tilt in Russia marked the twi-

light of Herzen’s public career. He died in Paris in

1870, and was buried in Nice. Over time he became

a symbolic founding figure of Russia’s democratic

movement, broadly conceived to include its differ-

ent and often widely divergent ideological and po-

litical traditions. In this, his reputation is similar

to Pushkin’s standing within Russian literature. He

is best remembered for his ability to synthesize a

variety of anti-authoritarian currents, from liberal

and libertarian to revolutionary-socialist and Rus-

sophile populist, whose mutual contradictions

were not as clearly evident in his time as they be-

came in later years.

Among his many literary works, which range

from fiction to philosophy and politics, the central

place is occupied by My Past and Thoughts, which

was written between 1852 and 1866. This is a per-

sonal, political, and intellectual autobiography, into

which he injected a wide-ranging discussion and

analysis of the major developments of his time in

Russia and Europe.

See also: DISSIDENT MOVEMENT; POPULISM; SOCIALIST

REVOLUTIONARIES; WESTERNIZERS

HERZEN, ALEXANDER IVANOVICH

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Herzen, Alexander. (1979). The Russian People and Social-

ism, tr. Richard Wollheim. Oxford: Oxford Univer-

sity Press.

Herzen, Alexander. (1989). From the Other Shore, tr.

Moura Budberg. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Herzen, Alexander. (1999). My Past and Thoughts, tr.

Constance Garnett. Berkeley: University of Califor-

nia Press.

Herzen, Alexander, and Zimmerman, Judith E. (1996).

Letters from France and Italy, 1847-1851. Pitt Series

in Russian and East European Studies, No 25. Pitts-

burgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

Malia, Martin. (1961). Alexander Herzen and the Birth of

Russian Socialism, 1812–1855. Cambridge: Harvard

University Press.

Venturi Franco. (2001). Roots of Revolution, revised ed.,

tr. Francis Haskell. London: Phoenix Press.

Walicki, Andrzej. (1969). The Controversy over Capitalism:

Studies in the Social Philosophy of the Russian Pop-

ulists. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

MITRI

LINSKI

HIGHER PARTY SCHOOL

The Higher Party School was created in 1939 un-

der the Central Committee of the Communist Party

of the Soviet Union. It was tasked with training

future leaders (known in Soviet parlance as

“cadres”) for Party and state positions. The purpose

was to prepare them for propaganda work with

the masses and for supervising managers and state

officials, while ensuring their political loyalty or

partynost (Party-mindedness). In 1978 it was

merged with the Academy of Social Sciences, which

provided more advanced training. A similar Higher

School was created for the Young Communist

League (Komsomol) in 1969. Party officials under

the age of forty were selected by the Communist

Party and came to the main school in Moscow from

across the Soviet Union for a two-year training

program that was long on Marx, Lenin, and the

latest Party edicts and short on practical skills. For

leaders from the non-Russian republics, attendance

provided important exposure to life in the Soviet

capital. With the general erosion of ideology in the

Brezhnev era, the Party became increasingly con-

cerned about the efficacy of its ideological training,

so funding for Party education was increased.

Selection for the school was an important step

in the career ladder for would-be members of the

higher Party nomenklatura. Living conditions at the

school were comfortable, and it provided an oppor-

tunity to meet senior Party officials and to network

with one’s peers, connections that could be useful

in one’s future career. The Moscow school had

about 120 faculty and 300 students per year; it also

had 22 regional branches that ran shorter seminars

and correspondence courses for Communist leaders

at every level in the Party hierarchy, including the

heads of regional and city councils (soviets). Some

of these schools provided remedial education for

Party cadres who had missed out on higher educa-

tion. In the 1980s one in three of the regional

(obkom) party secretaries had passed through the

Higher Party School; its graduates included General

Secretary Yuri Andropov. Ironically Vyacheslav

Shostakovsky, the school’s rector, was one of the

leaders of the Democratic Platform movement that

in 1990 called for the Communist Party to relin-

quish its monopoly of power. After the collapse of

the Soviet Union, the network of Party schools

turned themselves into colleges of management and

public administration. The premises of the Higher

Party School itself are now occupied by the Russ-

ian State Humanities University.

See also: CADRES POLICY; COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SO-

VIET UNION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Rutland, Peter. (1992). The Politics of Economic Stagnation

in the Soviet Union. New York: Cambridge Univer-

sity Press.

ETER

UTLAND

HILARION, METROPOLITAN

(Eleventh century; exact dates unknown), first na-

tive of Rus to be metropolitan of Kiev, author of

the Sermon on Law and Grace.

Very little biographical information is known

about Hilarion. In the Russian Primary Chronicle un-

der 1051 it is reported that Prince Yaroslav of Kiev

assembled the bishops in St. Sophia Cathedral and

appointed Hilarion, a Carpatho-Rusyn (native of

Rus), as metropolitan bishop. He is described as a

devout man, learned in the Scriptures, and an as-

cetic, who served as one of Yaroslav’s priests in the

church of the Holy Apostles at Berestovo, a favorite

princely residence located just south of Kiev.

HIGHER PARTY SCHOOL

634

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

While a priest, Hilarion selected a spot on a hill

above the Dnieper not far from Berestovo where he

dug a small cave in which to chant the hours and

pray to God in solitude. This cave was later occu-

pied by Anthony of the Caves and served as the

foundation for the Caves Monastery of Kiev. Hi-

larion was the first native of Rus to be metropoli-

tan. The only other Carpatho-Rusyn to serve as

metropolitan in Kievan Rus was Klim Smolyatich

in the twelfth century. Scholars have long debated

Yaroslav’s motives for appointing Hilarion, and

many maintain that the decision reflects an anti-

Byzantine bias. There is no condemnation of the

appointment in Byzantine sources, however, and

Yaroslav’s purpose remains unclear. There is much

speculation but no concrete information for Hilar-

ion’s biography after his appointment. All that is

known is that the First Novgorod Chronicle mentions

a new metropolitan by 1055. Whether Hilarion’s

tenure survived his patron Yaroslav (d. 1054) is

not known.

Hilarion’s most significant contribution to

Kievan culture is his Sermon on Law and Grace. A

master of rhetoric and the oratorical tradition, Hi-

larion expressed the pride of his newly converted

nation as it joined the Christian community, and

celebrated its past achievements. Utilizing the fa-

miliar Biblical contrast between law and grace, Hi-

larion began by emphasizing the gift of grace

through Christ, which ended humankind’s sub-

servience to the law and through which Rus was

converted. In the second part of the sermon, Hi-

larion turned his attention to the apostle of Rus,

Vladimir I, as well as to the works of his son,

Yaroslav.

Scholars have often seen an anti-Jewish bias or

evidence of a struggle with Byzantium in the ser-

mon. There is little evidence of either, however, and

it is best read as a sophisticated and effective at-

tempt to establish the place of Rus in sacred his-

tory by moving from theological doctrine to the

specific pious actions of the Kievan princes.

Although a number of works have been at-

tributed to Hilarion, only the sermon and a con-

fession of faith followed by a postscript can with

any certainty be ascribed to his pen.

See also: CAVES MONASTERY; YAROSLAV VLADIMIROVICH

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Franklin, Simon. (1991). Sermons and Rhetoric of Kievan

Rus’. Cambridge, MA: Ukrainian Research Institute

of Harvard University.

The Russian Primary Chronicle: Laurentian Text. (1953).

Edited and translated by Samuel Hazzard Cross and

Olgerd. P. Sherbowitz-Wetzor. Cambridge, MA: The

Mediaeval Academy of America.

AVID

K. P

RESTEL

HIS MAJESTY’S OWN CHANCERY

His Majesty’s Own Chancery was formally founded

by Paul I (r. 1796–1801) in 1796. Centralizing power

further, Nicholas I (r. 1825–1855) greatly expanded

the Chancery’s power and role in government, plac-

ing it above the regular bureaucracy and under his

direct control. As the Russian bureaucracy grew

during the nineteenth century, the emperors strug-

gled to maintain personal control over it and to have

it carry out the imperial will. The Chancery was

one solution to this problem. It provided a mecha-

nism for greater monarchical control over govern-

ment and society, and it gave the emperor the

opportunity to bypass bureaucratic inertia.

In 1826 two departments were added to the

Chancery. The First Section prepared documents

and papers for the emperor’s review and supervised

the bureaucracy’s personnel. The Second Section

worked on the codification of the empire’s laws,

resulting in the publication in 1832 of The Funda-

mental Laws of the Russian Empire. After the death

of Empress Maria Fedorovna in 1828, a Fourth Sec-

tion was established to handle her sizeable charita-

ble endowments. In 1836, a Fifth Section studied

the conditions under which the state peasants lived,

and implemented reforms designed to improve

them. In contrast to serfs, who were owned by the

nobility, state peasants belonged to the emperor,

which gave the government greater flexibility in

regard to reform. More importantly, its research

became the basis for the emancipation of the serfs

legislation that was passed by Alexander II in 1861.

In 1842, a Sixth Section was charged with the es-

tablishment of Russian administrative control in

the Caucasus. These last two sections had a rela-

tively short existence, and were closed when the

tasks assigned to them were completed.

The Third Section, founded in 1826, became the

most famous—or infamous—part of the Chancery,

because of its police and supervisory functions that

were equivalent to an internal intelligence service.

It was a relatively effective state organ for the col-

lection and analysis of information and for the im-

plementation of the emperor’s will. Five subsections

HIS MAJESTY’S OWN CHANCERY

635

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

handled wide ranging duties. The first of these was

the most secret, and probably the most important

from the government’s point of view. It conducted

investigations into political crimes, and maintained

surveillance of society, and it kept watch on groups

and individuals that were deemed politically unre-

liable. After the revolutions of 1848 in several Eu-

ropean countries, its activities intensified, reflecting

the government’s, and Nicholas’s, growing fear of

penetration of radical revolutionary ideas into Rus-

sia. A second subsection handled corruption and

crime within the state apparatus. The third kept an

eye on foreigners living in Russia. The fourth man-

aged and controlled relations between peasants and

landowners. Censorship and control over printed

matter was assigned to the fifth subsection.

The Third Section also had an executive body

known as the Gendarme Corps, who were personal

representatives of the emperor. Members of the

corps were assigned to individual governorships

and large cities, where they played the role of ar-

biter between society and local governments while

supervising both. The corps provided the emperor

with reliable information on the condition of his

empire. Nicholas could not completely control the

bureaucratic machine that was his Chancery, how-

ever. For example, the Third Section maintained

surveillance on the heir to the throne, Grand Duke

Konstantin Nikolaevich, illegally and without his

or the emperor’s knowledge.

In the 1880s, the Chancery underwent serious

reorganization. Many of its functions were trans-

ferred to the ministries and the central bureaucracy.

The Ministry of the Interior took over many of the

responsibilities of the Third Section. The Gendarme

Corps remained in existence until 1917 as an elite

police force, but its central position did not survive

after the death of Nicholas I. By the reign of

Nicholas II, His Majesty’s Own Chancery handled

only questions related to promotions and pensions

of bureaucrats.

See also: NICHOLAS I

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Lincoln, W. Bruce. (1978). Nicholas I: Emperor and Auto-

crat of all the Russias. London: Indiana University

Press.

Saunders, David. (1992). Russia in the Age of Reaction and

Reform. London: Routledge.

Seton-Watson, Hugh. (1991). The Russian Empire 1801–

1917. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Yaney, George. (1973). The Systemization of Russian Gov-

ernment. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

HAND

P. S

HAKIBI

HISTORICAL SONGS

Folklorists apply this term to certain Russian oral

epic songs tracing to a later period than the type

of the bylina and dealing with known historical

persons and events. Although Soviet specialists at-

tempted to find earlier examples, the historical song

as people know it most probably arose in Muscovy

in the sixteenth century; the first clear examples

have to do with the reign of Tsar Ivan IV but ap-

pear to have been composed somewhat after it. His-

torical songs are typically shorter than the bylina

but continue many features of oral epic composi-

tion, including prosody. In place of the larger-than-

life bogatyr, the hero of a historical song is often a

common soldier or cossack. In this folklore genre

from a relatively late period observers have one of

their best opportunities to see how historical events

became adapted and transformed in the minds of

simple Russian people. What they produced were

imaginative, poetic treatments of problems, per-

sons, and happenings.

Two outstanding songs concerning Ivan the

Terrible and known in many collected variants are

those called “The Conquest of Kazan” and “The

Wrath of Ivan the Terrible against His Son.” Both

stress the dangerous anger of the tsar, which may

explode suddenly like the gunpowder that breached

the wall of Kazan during the Russian siege of 1552.

In the second instance it is turned against his own

son, a tsarevich whom he suspects of treason. The

offending parties have to be saved by a third per-

son who risks his own life by speaking up to the

tsar and is the real hero of the song. Historians

have tried to associate “The Wrath of Ivan the Ter-

rible against His Son” with the sack of Novgorod

in 1570, but the imperfect fit with history brings

out the fact that songs often embodied only a pop-

ular conception of the spirit of events. Ivan IV

emerges as both a fearful and a respected ruler.

Seventeenth-century historical songs include

themes associated with the Time of Troubles: the

supposed murder of Tsarevich Dmitry, a lament of

Ksenia Godunova, the rise of pretender Grishka

Otrepiev, the assassination of Mikhailo Skopin-

Shuisky. Stenka Razin’s reputation naturally in-

spired a number of songs later in the century. From

HISTORICAL SONGS

636

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

the eighteenth century, there is a cycle about Peter

the Great that depicts him as a people’s tsar who

mingled with the common folk. A development

from the historical songs were the so-called cos-

sack songs and soldier songs, usually still shorter

and sung rather than chanted. Although examples

of historical songs are claimed even from the mid-

nineteenth century, the genre was clearly dying

out.

See also: BYLINA; FOLKLORE; FOLK MUSIC; MUSIC

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Chadwick, N. Kershaw. (1964). Russian Heroic Poetry,

reprint ed. New York: Russell & Russell.

Stief, Carl. (1953). Studies in the Russian Historical Song.

Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger.

ORMAN

W. I

NGHAM

HISTORIOGRAPHY

Historiography is the writing of history, the ag-

gregation of historical compositions. The estab-

lishment of history as a modern scholarly discipline

in Russia dates back to the end of the seventeenth

and the first half of the eighteenth centuries. At the

order of Peter the Great, the accumulation of his-

torical sources began with the translation of works

of Western European historians such as Samuel

Pufendorf. Compositions that justified the tsar’s ac-

tivity and, in particular, the reasons behind the

Northern War were recounted by Peter’s compan-

ions, including Feofan Prokopovich and Petr

Shafirov. The eminent Russian statesman and His-

torian of the first half of the eighteenth century,

Vassily Tatischev, was influenced by rationalism.

He understood history as a political history of the

country. In Istoriia Rossiiskaia (Russian History,

published after his death), he provided, for the first

time, the classification of the periods of Russian his-

tory.

German historians were invited to work at the

Academy of Sciences in the 1730s and 1740s, and

they had a great impact on Russian historiogra-

phy. Three of these Germans were particularly im-

portant: Gerhard Friedrich Müller and Gottlieb

Siegfried Bayer, who formulated what is known as

Norman theory, and August Ludwig Schlözer, who

tried to reconstruct the original text of the earliest

Russian chronicle, Povest Vremennykh Let (The Pri-

mary Russian Chronicle), in his work titled Nestor.

Also important were the works of Major Gen-

eral Ivan Boltin, written in the 1780s and 1790s.

Boltin proposed the idea of a comparative method

of studying history, an approach that would take

into account the cause-and-effect connection be-

tween historical events. A great impact on social

conscience was made by Nikolai Karamzin’s Istoriia

Gosudarstva Rossiiskogo (The history of the Russian

state), published in twelve volumes between 1816

and 1829. This work was sold in enormous quan-

tities, according to the time’s standards. While work-

ing on the History, Karamzin developed the modern

Russian language. According to Alexander Pushkin,

Russia was discovered by Karamzin, like America

was discovered by Columbus. Methodologically,

however, the belles-lettres style of Karamzin’s

work did not suit the standards of historical sci-

ence of the time. Karamzin proved that autocracy

was vital for Russia, having proposed the thesis

that the history of the people belongs to the tsar.

As a counterweight to Karamzin’s history of the

state, publisher and journalist Nikolai Polevoi tried

to create Istoriia Russkogo Naroda (A History of the

Russian People), but he could not cope with the task.

Instead of the history of society, his six-volume

work, published between 1829 and 1833, was yet

another version of the history of state power. He was

unable to break away from the convention of orga-

nizing the material by ruling periods.

In the nineteenth century, historiography be-

came professional, and a majority of historical

works were now created by scholars at universi-

ties. The development of Russian historiography

was greatly affected by the philosophy of Georg

Hegel and the works of German historians, espe-

cially the representatives of the German historical

law school. From 1840 through the 1860s, in the

works of Konstantin Kavelin, Sergei Soloviev, and

Boris Chicherin, the Russian state (judicial) school

of historiography was formed. According to the

views of the historians of the Russian state school,

Russia differed markedly from the West, where so-

cial development came from the bottom. In Russia,

according to this view, the organizer of society,

classes, and the relations between classes was the

state. The society was typically weak, unorganized,

and movable, which was supported by the geo-

graphical distribution of Russian people on the

Western European plain, a circumstance that pro-

vided for no natural borders. For Kavelin, the state

acted as a creator of history.

The theoretical views of historians of the state

school were most fully embodied in the Istoriia

HISTORIOGRAPHY

637

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

Rossii S Drevneishikh Vremen (History of Russia from

Ancient Times), published in twenty-nine volumes

between 1851 and 1879. This work was written

by the greatest Russian historian, Sergei Mikhailo-

vich Soloviev. His conception was characterized by

the perception of the inner organic pattern of the

historical process, defined by objective, primarily

geographical, factors and of the state, as the supreme

embodiment of the history of the people. He be-

lieved the most important factor of Russian history

to be its colonization, and he saw the breakthrough

in Russian history to be the reign of Peter the Great,

who put Russia on the path to Europeanization.

As a counterweight to the members of the state

school, referred to as Westernizers, who believed

that Russia was developing the same way as West-

ern Europe, Slavophiles (among them Ivan and

Konstantin Aksakov and Ivan and Petr Kireyevsky)

believed that Russia’s development was independent

and self-directed, and that Peter the Great’s reforms

were artificial. They believed that it was necessary

to return to the policies of the seventeenth century,

when the tsar had the power of rule and the peo-

ple had the power of opinion. They were influenced

by German Romanticism, especially as expressed in

Friedrich Schelling’s philosophy. Slavophiles did not

create any significant historical works other than

Ivan Belyaev’s Krestiane na Rusi (Peasants in Rus-

sia), published in 1860.

In the second half of the nineteenth century,

more and more works of Russian historians con-

cerned the socioeconomic problems, the history of

peasants and serfdom, and peasant communes. The

eminent historian of this time period was Vasily

Osipovich Klyuchevsky, who replaced his teacher,

Soloviev, in the Department of Russian History at

the Moscow University. Klyuchevsky believed that

Russian history developed under the influence of

various factors, geographical, economic, social, and

political. Klyuchevsky’s great influence is partly ex-

plained by the brilliant style of his works, espe-

cially his lectures Kurs Russkoii Istorii (A Course of

Russian History), first printed in 1880 as litho-

graphs, appearing in five bound volumes between

1904 and 1921. He was known for his deeply psy-

chological approach, and his portraits of Russian

historical figures are still unmatched. Klyuchevsky

was skeptical of Peter the Great’s reforms, believ-

ing them to be chaotically organized and prompted

by the needs of the Northern War.

Klyuchevsky’s school became the leading school

in Russian historiography of the late nineteenth and

early twentieth centuries. The members of this

school included Paul Milyukov, Alexander Kizevet-

ter, Mikhail Lubavsky, Mikhail Bogoslovsky, and

others. Methodological searches were typical for

Russian historians of that time: they were affected

by ideas of neopositivism (Miliukov), neokantian-

ism (Alexander Lappo-Danilevsky), and Marxism

(Mikhail Tugan-Baranovksy, Petr Struve). The

more popular general work on the history of Rus-

sia published in this period was Milyukov’s Ocherki

Po Istorii Russkoii Kultury (Essays on the History of

Russian Culture), which came out in several parts

from 1896 to 1903. Milyukov formed a thesis about

the simplicity and slowness of Russia’s historical

process, and of the structure of Russian history as

having been built from the top down. Standing

apart from the supporters of Russia’s independent

historical process, Nikolai Pavlov-Silvansky tried to

prove its similarity to the Western European expe-

rience, postulating the presence of feudalism in me-

dieval Russia in his Feodalizm v Drevnei Rusi

(Feudalism in Old Russia) published in 1907.

For the Moscow school generalizations were

typical, but the historians of the St. Petersburg

school (Konstantin Bestuzhev-Riumin, Sergei

Platonov, Lappo-Danilevsky, and others) paid spe-

cial attention to publication and the analysis of ear-

lier historical sources.

In general, Russian historiography of the early

twentieth century blossomed early, but this ended

abruptly with the October Revolution of 1917. Af-

ter the Bolsheviks prohibited the teaching of his-

tory in schools and dismantled the historical

departments in universities, the last citadel of non-

Marxist historiography was the Academy of Sci-

ences, but after the so-called Academic Affair and

mass repressions against historians from 1929 to

1931, the Marxist-Leninist school of historiogra-

phy became supreme in the USSR.

See also: KARAMZIN, NIKOLAI MIKHAILOVICH KLYUCHEV-

SKY, VASILY OSIPOVICH

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Byrnes, Robert F. (1995). V. O. Kliuchevsky: Historian of

Russia. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Mazour, Anatole. (1975). Modern Russian Historiography.

Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

Sanders, Tomas, ed. (1999). Historiography of Imperial

Russia. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharp.

Vernadsky, George. (1978). Russian Historiography: A

History. Belmont, MA: Nordland.

LEG

UDNITSKII

HISTORIOGRAPHY

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

HOLY ALLIANCE

The Holy Alliance is the name given to the treaty

signed on September 26, 1815, in Paris by the mon-

archs of Austria, Prussia, and Russia. Its maker and

prime mover was Tsar Alexander I. In 1815 after

the downfall of Napoleon, Alexander was at the

height of his powers. A romantic, an idealist, in-

deed something of an evangelical who had experi-

enced a religious conversion in 1812, Alexander had

fallen under the influence of a spiritualist, Baroness

Julie von Krüdener, the wife of one of his diplo-

mats, and the alliance was the product of nightly

prayer meetings between the two. The alliance

called upon the three powers to deal with one other

and with their peoples on the basis of the Christ-

ian Gospel so there could emerge a fraternal union

of rulers and peoples that would forever rid the

earth of the scourge of war. At the insistence of the

Austrian chancellor, Klemens von Metternich,

Alexander’s ally in the war against Napoleon, “fra-

ternal” was struck out and changed to “a paternal

alliance of monarchs over their peoples,” lest the

former clause be interpreted by Russia in a man-

ner that would conflict with the language of other

treaties under negotiation at this time.

Two common criticisms of the Holy Alliance

are that its members (which in time included most

the sovereigns of Europe) forged it into an instru-

ment of oppression against their subjects, and,

more important, that Alexander used it as a base

to attain hegemony in Europe. Neither criticism is

persuasive. The first can be challenged on factual

grounds. The aspirations of the overwhelming ma-

jority of Europeans in the aftermath of the devas-

tation of the Napoleonic Wars ran to one thing and

one thing only: peace. National rights, national lib-

erties, and the like were at this time simply not

matters of priority. Moreover, the Holy Alliance

powers exercised considerable restraint after 1815,

as demonstrated by the extent to which they al-

lowed multiple revolutionary fuses to be lit before

they stepped in—in a real sense they allowed rev-

olutions to explode (the Spanish and Italian revo-

lutions of 1820–1821; the revolutions in France,

Belgium, the Papal States, and Poland in 1830–1831;

those in France, Germany, Austria, and Italy in

1848). Similarly, the argument that Alexander was

bent on expansion in Europe overlooks the many

things he did that pulled the opposite way. With a

combination of threats and persuasion, he forced

Prussia from the path of aggrandizement in Poland

and onto that of cooperation with Austria. He re-

sisted repeated appeals from the smaller German

states for an anti-Austrian alliance—a move that

he believed would be inimical to the interests of the

general peace. Finally, he continually urged Rus-

sians to respect Turkish interests in the Balkans and

especially in Greece. The fact is that Alexander was

a committed moderate statesman who happened to

believe what he said, and what he said illustrates a

point often forgotten by historians and political sci-

entists—that there is a place in the international

system for principles and moral values.

See also: NAPOLEON I; VIENNA, CONGRESS OF

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Knapton, Ernest John. (1939). The Lady of the Holy Al-

liance: The Life of Julie de Krüdener. New York: Co-

lumbia University Press.

Nicolson, Harold. (1946). The Congress of Vienna: A Study

in Allied Unity, 1812–1822. New York: Harcourt,

Brace.

Schroeder, Paul. (1994). The Transformation of European

Politics, 1763–1848. Oxford: Oxford University

Press.

AVID

ETZEL

HOLY SYNOD

The governing body of the Russian Orthodox

Church from 1721 to 1917.

On January 25, 1721, Peter the Great formally

established an Ecclesiastical College to rule and re-

form the Russian Orthodox Church. This new

governing body was renamed the Most Holy Gov-

erning Synod at its first session in February and

replaced the former office of Patriarch, which had

been in abeyance since the death of the last in-

cumbent, Adrian, in 1700. The creation of the

Synod, modeled after the state-controlled synods of

the Lutheran church, was an integral part of Pe-

ter’s wider program for the reform of Russia’s sec-

ular administrative and military machine, a

program aimed at improving efficiency, eradicat-

ing abuses, and, above all, increasing the Sover-

eign’s control of revenue.

The Synod was entrusted with the administra-

tion of all church affairs. A governing statute called

the Ecclesiastical Regulation was written by Arch-

bishop Feofan Prokopovich, with amendments by

Peter. According to the statute, the Synod was to

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

have twelve clerical members appointed by the tsar,

although in practice there were always fewer. De-

spite the powers granted by the statute, ecclesias-

tical authority was effectively reduced in 1722

when Peter created the office of over-procurator to

oversee the Synod. The over-procurator was to be

a lay official whose chief duty was to be the Sov-

ereign’s “eye,” to “ensure that the Synod does its

duty.” In theory the Synod was meant to be equal

to its secular counterpart, the Senate, but in real-

ity ecclesiastical government had very little auton-

omy and was firmly subordinate to the tsar.

Collegial administration guaranteed the Sovereign

firmer control over the church than patriarchal ad-

ministration had allowed, and removed the chal-

lenge to the tsar’s authority that a patriarch had

represented.

Despite the formal recognition of the Synod in

1723 by four Eastern patriarchs, Russian clergy re-

sented the abolition of Russia’s patriarchate, the

domination of the Synod by Peter’s handpicked for-

eign clergy, and the interference in church affairs

by the over-procurator. Nonetheless, attempts to

restore the patriarchate after Peter’s death in 1725

failed. Instead, the office of over-procurator (in

abeyance from 1726) was restored in 1741, gain-

ing exclusive access to the tsar in 1803. From 1824

the over-procurator exercised effective authority

over all aspects of church administration and held

ministerial rank. The best-known incumbent, Kon-

stantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev (1880–1905), was

able to wield far-reaching influence during his

procuratorship.

After the election of the First Imperial Duma in

1905, deputies began to voice concern over the

Synod’s subservience to the procurator and tsar,

but only after Nicholas II’s abdication could steps

be taken to restore the autonomy of the church. In

July 1917 the Provisional Government abolished

the post of over-procurator and invited the Synod

to call elections to a council to decide the future of

church administration. In November 1917 a coun-

cil of 564 delegates reestablished the patriarchate

and elected Metropolitan Tikhon of Moscow as Pa-

triarch of All Russia, thus bringing to an end Peter

the Great’s system of Synodal governance.

See also: ORTHODOXY; PETER I; POBEDONOSTSEV, KON-

STANTIN

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cracraft, James. (1971). The Church Reform of Peter the

Great. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Freeze, Gregory. (1983). The Parish Clergy in the Nine-

teenth Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University

Press.

Hughes, Lindsey. (1998). Russia in the Age of Peter the

Great. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

EBRA

A. C

OULTER

HOMELESS CHILDREN

Homeless children, or besprizorniki, constituted one

of the most vexing social problems facing the new

Soviet state, caused by cumulative effects of World

War I (1914–1917), the Russian Revolution and

Civil War (1918–1921), and cold, hunger, and

disease, which claimed the lives of millions of par-

ents. The catastrophic famine of 1921 and 1922

produced millions of additional orphaned and aban-

doned children. Divorce, single motherhood, un-

employment, and economic dislocation pushed

surviving children out on the streets. By 1922, his-

torian Alan Ball estimates, there were seven million

homeless children in Russia.

These homeless children represented a profound

crisis for the Bolshevik government. They roamed

the country alone and in groups, often following

rail arteries to Moscow, Rostov-on-the-Don,

Samara, Saratov, Tashkent, and other cities. Seem-

ingly omnipresent waifs begged for food in train

stations and other public places. Most resorted to

stealing, petty crimes, and prostitution. The state

sent children to special homes (detdoma), long-term

boarding institutions run by the Commissariat of

Enlightenment (Narkompros). Initially intended to

offer programs capable of instilling in the waifs an

instinct for the collective and preparing them to join

the ranks of the proletariat, these children’s homes

were overwhelmed by the sheer volume of home-

less children. Many children’s homes lacked food

and heat and were rife with dysentery, scurvy, and

syphilis. Countless children escaped from these in-

stitutions, preferring to take their chances on the

streets. Labor communes, most notably the secret

police’s Dzerzhinsky Labor Commune run by An-

ton Makarenko, sought to rehabilitate young

delinquents and met with mixed success.

Convinced that socialized child rearing was an

impossible ideal, the state, beginning in 1925,

shifted its focus back to the family as the basic unit

for social structure. The 1926 Family Code em-

phasized the family as a unit for effecting social

HOMELESS CHILDREN

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

change rather than the state; thousands of bespri-

zorniki left state-funded children’s homes and were

adopted. By 1927 besprizorniki were considered less

a pedagogical than a social problem stemming from

the breakdown of the Soviet family. Increasingly,

the state relied on punishment rather than peda-

gogy to clear the streets of besprizorniki, ordering

militia sweeps of the children in the 1930s. The

problem of homeless children did not go away; col-

lectivization and the famine of 1932 and 1933 pro-

duced another wave of homeless children. Most of

these besprizorniki were placed in children’s homes

and special schools for young delinquents. The

number of homeless children continued to increase

during times of severe social strain, notably World

War II and the collapse of the Soviet Union, though

not on the scale that the country witnessed in the

1920s.