Encyclopedia of Russian History

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The settlement at Lyubech provided a basis for

orderly succession to the Kievan throne for the next

forty years. When Svyatopolk Izyaslavich died, his

cousin Vladimir Vsevolodich Monomakh became

prince of Kiev (r. 1113–1125). He was succeeded

by his sons Mstislav (r. 1125–1132) and Yaropolk

(r. 1132–1139). But the Lyubech agreement also

acknowledged division of the dynasty into distinct

branches and Kievan Rus into distinct principalities.

The descendants of Svyatoslav ruled Chernigov.

Galicia and Volynia, located southwest of Kiev, ac-

quired the status of separate principalities in the

late eleventh and twelfth centuries, respectively.

During the twelfth century, Smolensk, located

north of Kiev on the upper Dnieper river, and Ros-

tov-Suzdal, northeast of Kiev, similarly emerged as

powerful principalities. The northwestern portion

of the realm was dominated by Novgorod, whose

strength rested on its lucrative commercial relations

with Scandinavian and German merchants of the

Baltic as well as on its own extensive empire that

stretched to the Ural mountains by the end of the

eleventh century.

The changing political structure contributed to

repeated dynastic conflicts over succession to the

Kievan throne. Some princes became ineligible for

the succession to Kiev and concentrated on devel-

oping their increasingly autonomous realms. But

the heirs of Vladimir Monomakh, who became the

princes of Volynia, Smolensk, and Rostov-Suzdal,

as well as the princes of Chernigov, became em-

broiled in succession disputes, often triggered by

attempts of younger members to bypass the elder

generation and to reduce the number of princes el-

igible for the succession.

The greatest confrontations occurred after the

death of Yaropolk Vladimirovich, who had at-

tempted to arrange for his nephew to be his suc-

cessor and had thereby aroused objections from his

own younger brother Yuri Dolgoruky, the prince

of Rostov-Suzdal. As a result of the discord among

Monomakh’s heirs, Vsevolod Olgovich of Chernigov

was able to take the Kievan throne (r. 1139–1146)

and regain a place in the Kievan succession cycle

for his dynastic branch. After his death, the con-

test between Yuri Dolgoruky and his nephews re-

sumed; it persisted until 1154, when Yuri finally

ascended to the Kievan throne and restored the tra-

ditional order of succession.

An even more destructive conflict broke out af-

ter the death in 1167 of Rostislav Mstislavich, suc-

cessor to his uncle Yuri. When Mstislav Izyaslavich,

the prince of Volynia and a member of the next

generation, attempted to seize the Kievan throne, a

coalition of princes opposed him. Led by Yuri’s son

Andrei Bogolyubsky, it represented the senior gen-

eration of eligible princes, but also included the sons

of the late Rostislav and the princes of Chernigov.

The conflict culminated in 1169, when Andrei’s

forces evicted Mstislav Izyaslavich from Kiev and

sacked the city. Andrei’s brother Gleb became prince

of Kiev.

Prince Andrei personified the growing tensions

between the increasingly powerful principalities of

Kievan Rus and the state’s center, Kiev. As prince

of Vladimir-Suzdal (Rostov-Suzdal), he concen-

trated on the development of Vladimir and chal-

lenged the primacy of Kiev. Nerl Andrei used his

power and resources, however, to defend the prin-

ciple of generational seniority in the succession to

Kiev. Nevertheless, after Gleb died in 1171, Andrei’s

coalition failed to secure the throne for another of

his brothers. A prince of the Chernigov line, Svy-

atoslav Vsevolodich (r. 1173–1194), occupied the

Kievan throne and brought dynastic peace.

By the turn of the century, eligibility for the

Kievan throne was confined to three dynastic lines:

the princes of Volynia, Smolensk, and Chernigov.

Because the opponents were frequently of the same

generation as well as sons of former grand princes,

dynastic traditions of succession offered little guid-

ance for determining which prince had seniority.

By the mid-1230s, princes of Chernigov and

Smolensk were locked in a prolonged conflict that

had serious consequences. During the hostilities

Kiev was sacked two more times, in 1203 and 1235.

The strife revealed the divergence between the

southern and western principalities, which were

deeply enmeshed in the conflicts over Kiev, and

those of the northeast, which were relatively in-

different to them. Intradynastic conflict, com-

pounded by the lack of cohesion among the

components of Kievan Rus, undermined the in-

tegrity of the realm. Kievan Rus was left without

effective defenses before the Mongol invasion.

When the state of Kievan Rus was forming, its

populace consisted primarily of rural agricultural-

ists who cultivated cereal grains as well as peas,

lentils, flax, and hemp in natural forest clearings

or in those they created by the slash-and-burn

method. They supplemented these products by

fishing, hunting, and gathering fruits, berries,

nuts, mushrooms, honey, and other natural prod-

ucts in the forests around their villages.

KIEVAN RUS

753

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

Commerce, however, provided the economic

foundation for Kievan Rus. The tenth-century

Rurikid princes, accompanied by their military ret-

inues, made annual rounds among their subjects

and collected tribute. Igor met his death in 945 dur-

ing such an excursion, when he and his men at-

tempted to take more than the standard payment

from the Drevlyane. After collecting the tribute of

fur pelts, honey, and wax, the Kievan princes loaded

their goods and captives in boats, also supplied by

the local population, and made their way down the

Dnieper River to the Byzantine market of Cherson.

Oleg in 907 and Igor, less successfully, in 944 con-

ducted military campaigns against Constantinople.

The resulting treaties allowed the Rus to trade not

only at Cherson, but also at Constantinople, where

they had access to goods from virtually every cor-

ner of the known world. From their vantage point

at Kiev the Rurikid princes controlled all traffic

moving from towns to their north toward the

Black Sea and its adjacent markets.

The Dnieper River route “from the Varangians

to the Greeks” led back northward to Novgorod,

which controlled commercial traffic with traders

from the Baltic Sea. From Novgorod commercial

goods also were carried eastward along the upper

Volga River through the region of Rostov-Suzdal

to Bulgar. At this market center on the mid-Volga

River, which formed a nexus between the Rus and

the markets of Central Asia and the Caspian Sea,

the Rus exchanged their goods for oriental silver

coins or dirhams (until the early eleventh century)

and luxury goods including silks, glassware, and

fine pottery.

The establishment of Rurikid political domi-

nance contributed to changes in the social compo-

sition of the region. To the agricultural peasant

population were added the princes themselves, their

military retainers, servants, and slaves. The intro-

duction of Christianity by Prince Vladimir brought

a layer of clergy to the social mix. It also trans-

formed the cultural face of Kievan Rus, especially

in its urban centers. In Kiev Vladimir constructed

the Church of the Holy Virgin (also known as the

Church of the Tithe), built of stone and flanked by

two other palatial structures. The ensemble formed

the centerpiece of “Vladimir’s city,” which was sur-

rounded by new fortifications. Yaroslav expanded

“Vladimir’s city” by building new fortifications

that encompassed the battlefield on which he de-

feated the Pechenegs in 1036. Set in the southern

wall was the Golden Gate of Kiev. Within the pro-

tected area Vladimir constructed a new complex of

churches and palaces, the most imposing of which

was the masonry Cathedral of St. Sophia, which

was the church of the metropolitan and became the

symbolic center of Christianity in Kievan.

The introduction of Christianity met resistance

in some parts of Kievan Rus. In Novgorod a pop-

ular uprising took place when representatives of

the new church threw the idol of the god Perun

into the Volkhov River. But Novgorod’s landscape

was also quickly altered by the construction of

wooden churches and, in the middle of the eleventh

century, by its own stone Cathedral of St. Sophia.

In Chernigov Prince Mstislav constructed the

Church of the Transfiguration of Our Savior in

1035.

By agreement with the Rurikids the church be-

came legally responsible for a range of social prac-

tices and family affairs, including birth, marriage,

and death. Ecclesiastical courts had jurisdiction over

church personnel and were charged with enforcing

Christian norms and rituals in the larger commu-

nity. Although the church received revenue from

its courts, the clergy were only partially success-

ful in their efforts to convince the populace to aban-

don pagan customs. But to the degree that they

were accepted, Christian social and cultural stan-

dards provided a common identity for the diverse

tribes comprising Kievan Rus society.

The spread of Christianity and the associated

construction projects intensified and broadened

commercial relations between Kiev and Byzantium.

Kiev also attracted Byzantine artists and artisans,

who designed and decorated the early Rus churches

and taught their techniques and skills to local ap-

prentices. Kiev correspondingly became the center

of craft production in Kievan Rus during the

eleventh and twelfth centuries.

While architectural design and the decorative

arts of mosaics, frescoes, and icon painting were

the most visible aspects of the Christian cultural

transformation, Kievan Rus also received chroni-

cles, saints’ lives, sermons, and other literature

from the Greeks. The outstanding literary works

from this era were the Primary Chronicle or Tale of

Bygone Years, compiled by monks of the Monastery

of the Caves, and the “Sermon on Law and Grace,”

composed (c. 1050) by Metropolitan Hilarion, the

first native of Kievan Rus to head the church.

During the twelfth century, despite the emer-

gence of competing political centers within Kievan

Rus and repeated sacks of it (1169, 1203, 1235),

the city of Kiev continued to thrive economically.

KIEVAN RUS

754

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

Its diverse population, which is estimated to have

reached between 36,000 and 50,000 persons by the

end of the twelfth century, included princes, sol-

diers, clergy, merchants, artisans, unskilled work-

ers, and slaves. Its expanding handicraft sector

produced glassware, glazed pottery, jewelry, reli-

gious items, and other goods that were exported

throughout the lands of Rus. Kiev also remained a

center of foreign commerce, and increasingly re-

exported imported goods, exemplified by Byzantine

amphorae used as containers for oil and wine, to

other Rus towns as well.

The proliferation of political centers within

Kievan Rus was accompanied by a diffusion of the

economic dynamism and increasing social com-

plexity that characterized Kiev. Novgorod’s econ-

omy also continued to be centered on its trade with

the Baltic region and with Bulgar. By the twelfth

century artisans in Novgorod were also engaging

in new crafts, such as enameling and fresco paint-

ing. Novgorod’s flourishing economy supported a

population of twenty to thirty thousand by the

early thirteenth century. Volynia and Galicia, Ros-

tov-Suzdal, and Smolensk, whose princes vied po-

litically and military for Kiev, gained their economic

vitality from their locations on trade routes. The

construction of the masonry Church of the Mother

of God in Smolensk (1136–1137) and of the Cathe-

dral of the Dormition (1158) and the Golden Gate

in Vladimir reflected the wealth concentrated in

these centers. Andrei Bogolyubsky also constructed

his own palace complex of Bogolyubovo outside

Vladimir and celebrated a victory over the Volga

Bulgars in 1165 by building the Church of the In-

tercession nearby on the Nerl River. In each of these

principalities the princes’ boyars, officials, and re-

tainers were forming local, landowning aristocra-

cies and were also becoming consumers of luxury

items produced abroad, in Kiev, and in their own

towns.

In 1223 the armies of Chingis Khan, founder

of the Mongol Empire, first reached the steppe

south of Kievan Rus. At the Battle of Kalka they

defeated a combined force of Polovtsy and Rus

drawn from Kiev, Chernigov, and Volynia. The

Mongols returned in 1236, when they attacked

Bulgar. In 1237–1238 they mounted an offensive

against Ryazan and then Vladimir-Suzdal. In 1239

they devastated the southern towns of Pereyaslavl

and Chernigov, and in 1240 conquered Kiev.

The state of Kievan Rus is considered to have

collapsed with the fall of Kiev. But the Mongols

went on to subordinate Galicia and Volynia before

invading both Hungary and Poland. In the after-

math of their conquest, the invaders settled in the

vicinity of the lower Volga River, forming the por-

tion of the Mongol Empire commonly known as

the Golden Horde. Surviving Rurikid princes made

their way to the horde to pay homage to the Mon-

gol khan. With the exception of Prince Michael of

Chernigov, who was executed, the khan confirmed

each of the princes as the ruler in his respective

principality. He thus confirmed the disintegration

of Kievan Rus.

See also: OLGA; PRIMARY CHRONICLE; ROUTE TO GREEKS;

VIKINGS; YAROSLAV VLADIMIROVICH

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Chronicle of Novgorod, 1016–1471, tr. Robert Michell and

Nevill Forbes. (1914). London: Royal Historical So-

ciety.

Dimnik, Martin. (1994). The Dynasty of Chernigov

1054–1146. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediae-

val Studies.

Fennell, John. (1983). The Crisis of Medieval Russia

1200–1304. London: Longman.

Franklin, Simon, and Shepard, Jonathan. (1996). The

Emergence of Rus 750–1200. London: Longman.

Kaiser, Daniel H. (1980) The Growth of Law in Medieval

Russia. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Martin, Janet. (1995). Medieval Russia 980–1584. Cam-

bridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Poppe, Andrzej. (1982). The Rise of Christian Russia. Lon-

don: Variorum Reprints.

The Russian Primary Chronicle, Laurentian Text, tr. Samuel

Hazzard Cross and Olgerd P. Sherbowitz-Wetzor.

(1953). Cambridge, MA: Medieval Academy of

America.

Shchapov, Yaroslav Nikolaevich. (1993). State and Church

in Early Russia, Tenth–Thirteenth Centuries. New

Rochelle, NY: Aristide D. Caratzas.

Vernadsky, George. (1948). Kievan Russia. New Haven,

CT: Yale University Press.

ANET

ARTIN

KIPCHAKS See POLOVTSY.

KIREYEVSKY, IVAN VASILIEVICH

(1806–1856), the most important ideologist of Russ-

ian Slavophilism, along with Alexei Khomyakov.

KIREYEVSKY, IVAN VASILIEVICH

755

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

The promulgation of Slavophilism in the mid-

dle third of the nineteenth century marked the turn

from Enlightenment cosmopolitanism to the fixa-

tion on national identity that has dominated much

of Russian culture since that time. No life better

suggests that crucial change in Russian cultural

consciousness than Kireyevsky’s. He first ventured

into publicism as the editor of a journal that he

called The European. The journal appeared in 1830,

but was suppressed by the government after only

two issues, almost entirely on the basis of a fanci-

ful reading of Kireyevsky’s important essay, The

Nineteenth Century, in the inflamed atmosphere cre-

ated by the European revolutions of that year. This

traumatic event helped to end the Western orien-

tation of Kireyevsky’s earlier career and led to a se-

ries of new relationships, which, taken together,

constituted a conversion to romantic nationalism.

Kireyevsky’s childhood was spent in Moscow

and on the family estate (Dolbino) in the vicinity

of Tula and Orel, where the Kireyevsky family had

been based since the sixteenth century. His father

died of cholera during the French invasion of 1812,

and he, his brother Peter, and their sisters were

raised by their beautiful and intelligent mother,

A. P. Elagina, who was the hostess of one of

Moscow’s most influential salons during the 1830s

and 1840s. The poet Vasily Zhukovsky, her close

friend, played some role in Kireyevsky’s early ed-

ucation and he had at least a nodding acquaintance

with other major figures in Russian culture, in-

cluding Pushkin.

Kireyevsky studied with Moscow University

professors in the 1820s, although he did not actu-

ally attend the university. There, under the influ-

ence of Professor Mikhail Grigorevich Pavlov, his

interests shifted from enlightenment thinkers to the

metaphysics of Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling. After

graduation he became one of the so-called archive

youth, to whom Pushkin refers in Eugene Onegin;

he also frequented an informal grouping known as

the Raich Circle, as well as a kind of inner circle

drawn from it, called the Lovers of Wisdom (Ob-

shchestvo Liubomudriya), devoted to romantic and

esoteric knowledge.

After producing some literary criticism for the

Moscow Messenger, Kireyevsky spent ten months in

Germany, cultivating his new intellectual interest

in German philosophy. He was entertained by Hegel

in Berlin and attended some of Schelling’s lectures

in Munich, but, like many a Russian traveler, he

was homesick for Russia and returned earlier than

he had planned. The outbreak of cholera in Moscow

was the official reason for his hasty return.

After the fiasco of the European, Kireyevsky un-

derwent an intellectual and spiritual crisis from

which he emerged, at the end of the 1830s, a con-

siderably changed man: married, converted to Or-

thodoxy, and purged of many Western aspects of

his former outlook. His wife’s religiosity; his

brother’s interest in Russian peasant culture, and

his new friend Alexei Khomyakov’s belief in the su-

periority of Orthodox practice over the Western

confessions all worked on him profoundly.

The immediate catalyst for the first Slavophile

writings, however, was the famous “First Philo-

sophical Letter” of Peter Chaadayev, which ap-

peared in a Moscow journal in 1836. Chaadayev

famously found Russia’s past and present stagnant,

sterile, and ahistorical, largely because Russia had

severed itself from the Roman and Catholic West.

The discussion between Kireyevsky, Khomyakov,

and their younger followers over the next several

decades constituted a collective “answer to Chaa-

dayev.” Orthodox Christianity, according to the

Slavophiles, actually benefited from its separation

from pagan and Christian Rome. Orthodoxy had

been spared the rationalism and legalism which had

been taken into the Roman Catholic Church, from

Aristotle, through Roman legalism, to scholasti-

cism and Papal hierarchy. Russian society had thus

been able to develop harmoniously and commu-

nally. Although, since Peter the Great, the Russian

elite had been seduced by the external power and

glamor of secular Europe, the Russian peasants had

preserved much of the old, pre-Petrine Russian cul-

ture in their social forms, especially in the peasant

communal structure. Kireyevsky and the other

Slavophiles hoped that these popular survivals,

combined with an Orthodox revival in the present,

could restore Russian culture to its proper bases.

Kireyevsky expressed these ideas in a series of short-

lived journals, which appeared under the editorship

of various Slavophile individuals and groups. The

Slavophile sketch of the patrimonial and traditional

monarchy of the pre-Petrine period is largely fan-

ciful, as is that of the social and political life dom-

inated by a variety of communal forms, but such

sketches constituted a highly effective indirect at-

tack on the Russia of Nicholas I and on the devel-

opment of European industrialism. Kireyevsky’s

Slavophilism, with its curious blend of traditional-

ism, libertarianism, and communalism, has left

unmistakable marks on virtually all variants of

Russian nationalism and social romanticism since

KIREYEVSKY, IVAN VASILIEVICH

756

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

his time. Although his written legacy was limited

to a few articles, Ivan Kireyevsky was the philoso-

pher of Slavophilism, just as Khomyakov was its

theologian.

See also: KHOMYAKOV, ALEXEI STEPANOVICH; SLAVOPHILES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Christoff, Peter. (1972). An Introduction to Nineteenth-

Century Russian Slavophilism: A Study in Ideas, Vol. 2:

I. V. Kireevsky. The Hague: Mouton.

Gleason, Abbott. (1972). European and Muscovite: Ivan

Kireevsky and the Origins of Slavophilism. Cambridge,

MA: Harvard University Press.

Walicki, Andrzej. (1975). The Slavophile Controversy: His-

tory of a Conservative Utopia in Nineteenth-Century

Russian Thought. Oxford: Clarendon.

BBOTT

LEASON

KIRILL-BELOOZERO MONASTERY

The Kirill-Beloozero Monastery was founded in

1397 in the far Russian north as a hermitage ded-

icated to the Dormition of the Virgin. Its founder

was Cyril of Belozersk, conversant of Sergius of

Radonezh, hesychast (mystical hermit), and former

abbot of Simonov Monastery. It rapidly gained

brethren, land, and renown. At Cyril’s death in

1427, its patron was the prince of Belozersk-

Mozhaisk, and its titular head was the Archbishop

of Rostov, to whom Kirillov was administratively

subordinated by 1478.

Social and administrative reforms occurred un-

der Abbot Trifon, who lived from about 1434 to

about 1517. Trifon was a monk of the Athos-linked

St. Savior Monastery on the Rock, and later became

Archbishop of Rostov (1462–1467). At this point the

monastery gained the name “Kirillov” and, proba-

bly, its strict cenobitic (communal-disciplinarian)

rule. It entered a relationship with the Moscow au-

thorities. During the civil wars, Trifon loosed Basil

II from his cross oath to Dmitry Shemyaka (1446);

Cyril was canonized in 1448 and his vita (life) was

written by Pachomius the Logothete in 1462. Tri-

fon’s successor and fellow St. Savior monk, Abbot

Cassian, who lived from about 1447 until about

1469, went on a Moscow embassy to the ecumeni-

cal patriarch in Constantinople.

During Trifon’s abbacy, a Byzantine-influenced

school flourished, where basic texts of grammar,

logic, cosmology, and history circulated. Its legacy

was a bibliographical trend whose representatives

(such as Efrosin, fl. 1463–1491) compiled and cat-

alogued much of the literary inheritance of Bul-

garia, Kievan Rus, and Serbia, and edited important

works of Muscovite literature (such as the epic

Zadonshchina) and chronography (the First Sophia

Chronicle). Kirillov’s great library (1,304 books by

1621) has survived almost intact.

From 1484 to 1514, Kirillov was a focal point

for the Non-Possessors, abbots and monks—

including Gury Tushin, Nilus Sorsky, and Vassian

Patrikeev—who rejected monastic estates and pro-

moted hesychast ideals of mental prayer and her-

mitism. After 1515, Kirillov followed the Possessor

trend, whose first leader, Joseph of Volok, had

praised the cenobitic discipline of several of its early

abbots. Kirillov’s sixteenth-century abbots achieved

high rank, such as Afanasy (1539–1551), later

bishop of Suzdal, whom Andrew Kurbsky called

“silver-loving,” and from 1530 to 1570 their land-

holdings expanded terrifically (at mid-seventeenth

century Kirillov was the fifth-largest landowner in

Muscovy).

Attracting wealth, privileges, and pilgrims from

the central government as well as the boyar aris-

tocracy, Kirillov lost self-governance to Moscow.

Ivan IV, whose birth was ascribed to St. Cyril’s

intervention and who expressed a wish to join Kir-

illov’s brethren in 1567, took over its administra-

tion, lecturing its abbot and boyar monks (such as

Ivan-Jonah Sheremetev) on piety in a letter of

1573. (Boris Godunov later selected Kirillov’s ab-

bot, and the False Dmitry chose its monks.) By the

mid-sixteenth century, Kirillov had become fiscally

subject to the bishop of Vologda, and by century’s

end to the patriarch.

In the 1590s Kirillov was transformed from a

cultural center into a fortress, with stone towers

and walls that withstood Polish-Lithuanian attacks

during the Time of Troubles. Its infirmary treated

monks and laymen, and its icon-painting and

stonemasonry workshops sold their wares to Mus-

covites. Kirillov was also used as a prison. Its most

illustrious detainee, Patriarch Nikon, was held in

solitary confinement from 1676 to 1681 without

access to his library, paper, or ink.

From the eighteenth century, Kirillov lost its

military importance, and an economic and spiri-

tual decline began. It was closed by Soviet author-

ities in 1924 and transformed into a museum. In

1998 monastic life at Kirillov was partly restored.

KIRILL-BELOOZERO MONASTERY

757

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

See also: CAVES MONASTERY; SIMONOV MONASTERY;

TRINITY ST. SERGIUS MONASTERY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fedotov, George P. (1966). The Russian Religious Mind.

Vol. II: The Middle Ages. The Thirteenth to the Fifteenth

Centuries. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

OBERT

OMANCHUK

KIRIYENKO, SERGEI VLADILENOVICH

(b. 1962), former prime minister of the Russian

Federation and a leader of the liberal party Union

of Right Forces.

Kiriyenko was born in Sukumi, which is presently

in Abkhazia, nominally a part of the Republic of

Georgia. In 1993 he received a degree in economic

leadership from the Academy of Economics. Soon

he founded a bank, Garantiya, in Nizhny Nov-

gorod. He was so successful that the governor,

Boris Nemtsov, recommended that he take over the

nearly bankrupt oil company, Norsi. He succeeded

once again, breaking the apathy that allowed a bad

situation to fester. He first threatened to close the

company, hoping this would spur workers’ effi-

ciency. It did not. So he worked out a complicated

restructuring plan that involved tax breaks and

new negotiations with workers, suppliers, and

buyers. Kiriyenko managed to convince all parties

that it was in their joint interests to increase pro-

duction, and within a year production increased

about 300 percent.

Kiriyenko now had a national reputation, and

Russian President Boris Yeltsin made him minister

for fuel and energy in 1997. In this capacity he fa-

vorably impressed American President Bill Clinton’s

Russian specialist Strobe Talbott. In March 1998

Yeltsin shocked Russia and the world when he

fired his long-time prime minister, Viktor Cher-

nomyrdin, and announced his intention to replace

him with Kiriyenko. There ensued a bitter battle be-

tween Yeltsin and the Duma over Kiriyenko’s ap-

pointment. Only on the third and last vote did the

Duma confirm Kiriyenko. In his first speech as

prime minister, Kiriyenko pointed out that Russia

faced “an enormous number of problems.”

Despite his talents, Kiriyenko could not change

some basic facts. By July 1998 unpaid wages to-

taled 66 billion rubles ($11 billion); service of the

government debt consumed almost 50 percent of

the budget; the price of oil, one of Russia’s chief

exports, was falling; and a financial crisis in Asia

had investors fleeing “emerging markets,” Russia

included. In June a desperate Yeltsin telephoned

Clinton to ask him to intervene in the deliberations

of the International Monetary Fund on Russia’s be-

half. It was too late. In August the Russian gov-

ernment in effect declared bankruptcy, and Yeltsin

dismissed the Kiriyenko government. As of June

2003, Kiriyenko was president of Russia’s chemi-

cal weapons disarmament commission.

See also: NEMTSOV, BORIS IVANOVICH; UNION OF RIGHT

FORCES; YELTSIN, BORIS NIKOLAYEVICH

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aron, Leon. (2000). Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life. London:

HarperCollins.

Talbott, Strobe. (2002). The Russia Hand: A Memoir of

Presidential Diplomacy New York: Random House.

UGH

HILLIPS

KIROV, SERGEI MIRONOVICH

(1886–1934), Leningrad Party secretary and Polit-

buro member.

Born in 1886 as Sergei Mironovich Kostrikov

in Urzhum, in the northern Russian province of

Viatka, Kirov was abandoned by his father and left

orphaned by his mother. He spent much of his

childhood in an orphanage before training as a me-

chanic at a vocational school in the city of Kazan

from 1901 to 1904. He became involved in radical

political activity during his student years, after

which he moved to Tomsk and joined the Social

Democratic Party, garnering attention as a local

party activist before the age of twenty. Kirov joined

the Bolshevik Party and was arrested in 1906 for

his activities in the revolutionary events of 1905 in

Tomsk. After his release in 1909, he moved to

Vladikavkaz and resumed his career as a profes-

sional revolutionary, taking a job with a local lib-

eral newspaper and changing his last name to

Kirov. He continued his party activities in the Cau-

casus in the years before the October Revolution,

serving in various capacities as one of the leading

Bolsheviks in the Caucasus during the Revolution

and civil war eras. Kirov occupied the post of sec-

retary of the Azerbaijan Central Committee from

1921 to 1926. In 1926 he became a candidate mem-

KIRIYENKO, SERGEI VLADILENOVICH

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

ber of the Politburo and took the position of first

secretary of the Leningrad Provincial Party organi-

zation, playing a major role in the political defeat

of Grigory Zinoviev by Josef Stalin. Kirov gained

full Politburo membership in 1930 and retained his

position as head of the Leningrad Party organiza-

tion until his death in 1934.

On December 1, 1934, a lone gunman named

Leonid Nikolaev murdered Kirv at the Leningrad

party headquarters. Kirov’s murder served as a pre-

text for a wave of repression that was carried out

by Stalin in 1935 and 1936 against former politi-

cal oppositionists, including Zinoviev and Lev

Kamenev, and against large sectors of the Leningrad

population. The connection between Kirov’s death

and the coordinated repression of 1935 and 1936

has led numerous contemporary observers, as well

as later scholars, to speculate that Stalin himself

arranged the murder in order to justify an attack

on his political opponents. Proponents of this the-

ory argue that Kirov represented a moderate op-

position to Stalin in the years 1930 to 1933, in

particular as an opponent to Stalin’s demand in

1932 for the execution of the oppositionist Mikhail

Riutin; they also argue that provincial-level party

bosses wanted to replace Stalin with Kirov as gen-

eral secretary of the Bolshevik Party at the Seven-

teenth Congress in 1934. Archival research carried

out after the fall of the USSR has generally failed

to support these claims, suggesting instead that

Kirov was a dedicated Stalinist and that Kirov’s

murderer was a disgruntled party member work-

ing without instruction from higher authorities.

Stalin’s repressive response to the Kirov murder

was likely a cynical use of the assassination for his

own political ends as well as a genuine response of

shock at the murder of a high-level Bolshevik of-

ficial. Proponents of Stalin’s responsibility, how-

ever, have not conceded the argument, and the

debate is unlikely to be resolved without substan-

tial additional evidence.

See also: CIVIL WAR OF 1917–1922; OCTOBER REVOLUTION;

PURGES, THE GREAT; SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC WORKERS

PARTY; STALIN, JOSEF VISSARIONOVICH

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Conquest, Robert. (1989). Stalin and the Kirov Murder.

New York: Oxford University Press.

Knight, Amy. (1999). Who Killed Kirov? New York: Hill

and Wang.

Lenoe, Matt. (2002). “Did Stalin Kill Kirov and Does It

Matter?” The Journal of Modern History 74: 352–80.

AUL

M. H

AGENLOH

KLYUCHEVSKY, VASILY OSIPOVICH

(1841–1911), celebrated Russian historian.

Vasily Klyuchevsky was born to the family of

a priest of Penza province. In 1865 he graduated

from the Moscow University (Historical-Philolog-

ical Department). In 1872 he earned a master’s de-

gree and in 1882 a doctorate. In 1879 he became

associate professor, and in 1882 professor, of Russ-

ian history at Moscow University. He was named

corresponding member of the Russian Academy of

Sciences in 1889 and academician of history and

Russian antiquities in 1900. Klyuchevsky was con-

nected with government and church circles. From

1893 to 1895 he taught history to Grand Duke

Georgy, son of Alexander II. In 1905 he took part

in a conference organized by Nicholas II on the new

KLYUCHEVSKY, VASILY OSIPOVICH

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

Sergei Kirov, the popular leader of the Leningrad Party

ETTMANN

/CORBIS

press regulations and also participated in confer-

ences on designing the state Duma. He was the

holder of many decorations and in 1903 was given

the rank of Privy Councilor. After legalization of

political parties in October 1905, Klyuchevsky ran

for election to the First State Duma on the Consti-

tutional Democratic ticket, but lost.

Klyuchevsky was a pupil and follower of Sergei

Solovev and his successor in the Department of

Russian History at Moscow University. His main

works are: (1) Drevne-russkie zhitiya sviatykh kak

istorichesky istochnik (The Old Russian Hagiography

as a Historical Source), published in 1872, in which

he proved that hagiography did not contain reli-

able historical facts; (2) Boiarskaya Duma drevnei

Rusi (The Boyar Duma of Old Russia), published in

1882, in which he studied the history of the most

important government institution in pre-Petrine

Russia; (3) Proiskhozhdenie krepostnogo prava v Rossii

(The Genesis of Serfdom in Russia), published in 1885,

in which he suggested a new conception of the ori-

gin of serfdom according to which serfdom was

engendered by peasants’ debts to landowners and

developed on the basis of private-legal relations, the

state only legalizing it; (4) Podushnaya podat i ot-

mena kholopstva v Rossii (Poll-Tax and the Abolition

of Bond Slavery in Russia), published in 1885, in

which he showed that a purely financial reform

had serious socio-economic consequences; and (5)

Sostav predstavitelstva na zemskikh soborakh drevnei

Rusi (The Composition of Representatives at Assemblies

of the Land in Old Russia), published in 1892, in

which he substantiated the point of view that the

assemblies were not representative institutions.

Klyuchevsky prepared a number of special courses

on source study, historiography of the eighteenth

century, methodology, and terminology and wrote

many articles on the history of Russian culture.

Starting in 1879 Klyuchevsky taught a general

course on Russian history from the ancient times

to the Great Reforms of the 1860s and 1870s. This

course is regarded as a summation of his research

findings and interpretations. Klyuchevsky believed

that world history developed in accordance with

certain objective regularities, “peoples consecutively

replacing one another as successive moments of

civilization, as phases of the development of hu-

mankind,” and that in the history of an individual

country these regularities play out under the in-

fluence of particular local conditions. He analyzed

Russian history through three principal categories:

the individual, society, and environment. In his

opinion, these elements determined the process of

a country’s historical development. The objective of

his course was to discover the “secret” of Russian

history: to assess what had been done and what

had to be done to put the developing Russian soci-

ety into the first rank of European nations. In his

opinion, a student who mastered his course should

become “a citizen who acts consciously and con-

scientiously,” capable of rectifying the shortcom-

ings of the social system of Russia.

Klyuchevsky was a positivist and tried to at-

tain positive scientific knowledge in his course.

However, from the point of view of his admirers,

the most valuable and attractive feature of his

course consisted in his artistic descriptions of his-

torical events and phenomena, replete with vivid

images and everyday scenes of the past; his origi-

nal analysis of sources and psychological analysis

of historical figures; and his skeptical and liberal

judgments and evaluations—in other words, in his

figurative and intuitive comprehension and artistic

representations of the past. He spoke ironically of

the shortcomings of the social system, social insti-

tutions, manners, and customs, and censured the

faults of tsars and statesmen. All these qualities at-

tracted crowds of students who understood his

ideas of the past as comments on current condi-

tions. His course exhibited such mastery of liter-

ary style that in 1908 he was named an honorary

member of Russian Academy of Sciences in belles

lettres.

At the Moscow University Klyuchevsky created

his own school, which prepared such prominent

historians as Alexander Kizevetter, Matvei Lyubav-

skii, Yuri Got’e, Pavel Milyukov, and others.

Klyuchevsky’s works continue to enjoy popularity

and to influence historiography in Russia to this

day.

See also: EDUCATION; HISTORIOGRAPHY; UNIVERSITIES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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

Russia. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press.

Kliuchevskii, V. O. (1960). A History of Russia, tr. C. J.

Hogarth. New York: Russell and Russell.

Kliuchevskii, V. O. (1961). Peter the Great, tr. Liliana

Archibald. New York: Vintage.

Kliuchevskii, V. O. (1968). Course in Russian History: The

Seventeenth Century, tr. Natalie Duddington. Chigago:

Quadrangle Books.

ORIS

N. M

IRONOV

KLYUCHEVSKY, VASILY OSIPOVICH

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

KOKOSHIN, ANDREI AFANASIEVICH

(b. 1946), member of the State Duma; deputy

chairman of the Duma Committee on Industry,

Construction, and High Technologies; chairman of

Expert Councils for biotechnologies and informa-

tion technologies; director of the Institute for

International Security Studies of the Russian Acad-

emy of Sciences; chairman of the Russian National

Council for the Development of Education.

A graduate of Bauman Technical Institute,

Kokoshin worked for two decades with the Insti-

tute of the United States and Canada of the Acad-

emy of Sciences (ISKAN), rising to the position of

deputy director and establishing a reputation as one

of the leading experts on U.S. defense and security

policy. He received his doctorate in political science

and is a member of the Academy of Natural Sci-

ences.

In the late 1980s Kokoshin collaborated on a

series of articles that promoted a radical change in

Soviet defense policy, supporting international dis-

engagement, domestic reform, and the technologi-

cal-organizational requirements of the Revolution

in Military Affairs. In 1991 he opposed the August

Coup. With the creation of the Russian Ministry of

Defense in May 1992, he was appointed first

deputy minister of defense with responsibility for

the defense industry and research and development.

In May 1997 Russian President Boris Yeltsin named

him head of the Defense Council and the State Mil-

itary Inspectorate. In March 1998 Yeltsin appointed

him head of the Security Council. In the aftermath

of the fiscal crisis of August 1998, Yeltsin fired

Kokoshin. In 1999 Kokoshin ran successfully for

the State Duma.

Kokoshin has written extensively on U.S. na-

tional security policy and Soviet military doctrine.

He championed the intellectual contributions of A.

A. Svechin to modern strategy and military art. His

Soviet Strategic Thought, 1917–1991, was published

by MIT Press in 1998.