Encyclopedia of Russian History

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cial-Democratic leader who was resolute in his op-

position to World War I.

Kollontai returned to Russia in the spring of

1917. She spent the revolutionary year working

with other Bolshevik feminists on projects among

working-class women. She also became one of the

Bolsheviks’ most effective speakers; her popularity

earned her election to the Central Committee. Af-

ter the party seized power in October, Kollontai be-

came Commissar of Social Welfare, and in that

capacity she laid the foundation for socialized ob-

stetrical and newborn care. In early March 1918

she resigned her post to protest the Brest-Litovsk

Treaty with Germany, and for the next two years

she divided her energies between agitation on the

front, writing, and organizing activities with

working-class women. In fall 1920 she was ap-

pointed head of the Zhenotdel, the Communist

Party’s Women’s Department.

Kollontai had argued for a woman’s depart-

ment since before the revolution. When she became

its head she worked diligently to build up the or-

ganization, which suffered from poor funding and

lack of support. She managed to stave off efforts

to abolish the Zhenotdel and also publicized widely

the party’s program for women’s emancipation.

Kollontai’s tenure in this office was short, how-

ever, because in 1921 she joined the Workers Op-

position, a group critical of Party authoritarianism.

She was fired from the Zhenotdel the next year.

In the following two decades Kollontai became

a distinguished Soviet diplomat. She served as So-

viet ambassador to Sweden from 1930 to her re-

tirement in 1945. Her most important contribution

was as mediator in negotiations to end the Winter

War between the USSR and Finland (1939–1940).

In the 1920s she also published novels and essays

that analyzed the gender and sexual liberation that

would come with the construction of a commu-

nist society. These works drew strong criticism

from more conservative communists, and Kollon-

tai ceased to publish on her favorite subject after

the Stalinist leadership consolidated power in the

late 1920s. Thereafter she wrote multiple versions

of her memoirs. She survived the party purges in

the 1930s, probably because she was a respected

diplomat who lived far away from party politics.

Kollontai died in Moscow on March 9, 1952.

With the revival of feminism in the 1960s, her

writings were rediscovered, and she came again to

be seen an important Marxist feminist.

See also: ARMAND, INESSA; BOLSHEVISM; FEMINISM;

KRUPSKAYA, NADEZHDA; SAMOILOVA, KONKORDIA;

ZHENOTDEL

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Clements, Barbara Evans. (1979). Bolshevik Feminist: the

Life of Aleksandra Kollontai. Bloomington: Indiana

University Press.

Clements, Barbara Evans. (1997). Bolshevik Women. Cam-

bridge: Cambridge University Press.

Farnsworth, Beatrice. (1980). Alexandra Kollontai: So-

cialism, Feminism, and the Bolshevik Revolution. Stan-

ford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Holt, Alix, ed. (1977). Selected Writings of Alexandra Kol-

lontai. Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill.

Kollontai, Alexandra. (1978) The Love of Worker Bees, tr.

Cathy Porter. Chicago: Academy Press Limited.

ARBARA

VANS

LEMENTS

KOMBEDY See COMMITTEES OF THE VILLAGE POOR.

KOMBEDY

763

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

Diplomat, feminist, and revolutionary, Alexandra Kollontai was

the world’s first female ambassador. © H

ULTON

RCHIVE

KOMI

The Komi are an indigenous Arctic people. Of

the 497,000 Komi (1989 census), the majority

(292,000) live in the Komi Republic, which extends

to the Arctic Circle, and in the contiguous Permian

Komi Autonomous okrug within the Perm oblast

(Komi population 95,000). Their language belongs

to the Finno-Ugric family and is mutually semi-

intelligible with Udmurt, farther south. In the

1300s the Komi were the merchants of the Far

North and had a unique alphabet. Most Komis have

Caucasian features. Distinguished U.S. sociologist

Pitrim Sorokin (1889–1968) was a Komi cultural

activist in his youth.

The northern Komi partly converted to Greek

Orthodoxy in the late 1300s, prior to the Novgorod

conquest, and maintained Komi-language liturgies

up to 1700. The Permian Komi Duchy of Great

Perm converted under duress just before Novgorod

was seized (1472) by Moscow, which allowed the

duke to stay as a vassal but dismissed his son. Cul-

tural renaissance was strong by 1900.

Despite Komi pleas, Moscow excluded the Per-

mian Komi from the Komi Autonomous oblast,

formed in 1921 and upgraded to Autonomous Re-

public in 1936. The Permian Komi National okrug

(district), formed in 1925, remains a “periphery of

a periphery” within the Perm oblast. Two separate

literary languages were developed. Numerous slave

labor camps were located in Komi lands. Russian

immigration has reduced the Komi from 92 per-

cent of the population in 1926 to 23 percent in

1989. In the okrug the drop has been from 77 per-

cent to 60 percent.

The huge and flat Komi Republic (population

1.3 million) produces 10 percent of Russia’s paper,

7 percent of its coal, and also oil and gas. Indige-

nous Komi live mainly in the southern agricultural

zone. Those who have shifted to Russian as their

main language (25%) participate actively in the eco-

nomic life. The Permian Komi okrug is a depressed

area where the only resource, lumber, has been de-

pleted.

In 1989 the First Komi National Congress es-

tablished a Komi National Revival Committee,

which succeeded in having Komi and Russian de-

clared coequal state languages in the Republic. The

impact has been real but limited, leading to the cre-

ation of a more activist organization, Doriam As-

nõmös (Let’s Defend Ourselves).

See also: FINNS AND KARELIANS; NATIONALITIES POLICIES,

SOVIET; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, TSARIST

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Lallukka, Seppo. (1995). “Territorial and Demographic

Foundations of Komi-Permiak Nationality.” Nation-

alities Papers 23:353–371.

Taagepera, Rein. (1999). The Finno-Ugric Republics and the

Russian State. London: Hurst.

EIN

AAGEPERA

KOMUCH

The Committee of the Constituent Assembly

(Komitet Uchreditelnogo Sobraniya) or KOMUCH

the first constitutional alternative to the Soviet rule

in Russia, emerged during the spring of 1918. The

alternative derived its legitimacy from the Con-

stituent Assembly, whose nine hundred deputies

had been elected in late 1917 to draft a new con-

stitution for the Russian Republic, proclaimed by

the Provisional Government on September 9. The

electoral victory of the Party of Socialist Revolu-

tionaries (PSR or SRs)—which won 58 percent of

the popular vote and 440 seats in the assembly,

compared to the Bolsheviks’ 25 percent of the vote

and 175 seats—augured well for the possibility of

a constitutional and peaceful evolution of Russia

into a modern democratic republic.

This possibility was thwarted, however, when

Lenin dissolved the Assembly on January 6. How-

ever, the SRs convened a secret conclave in Petro-

grad at the end of January and decided to organize

an armed uprising on behalf of the Assembly to

divest the Bolsheviks of power. They aimed to re-

convene the Assembly as the only source of legit-

imate authority in the country on the territories

liberated from the Bolsheviks; to renew the As-

sembly’s work on drafting a new constitution; and

to enact land and other reforms. To implement

these policies the party decided to shift the center

of its activities from Petrograd to Samara, Saratov,

and other strongholds in the Volga region. In

Samara the party established a Revolutionary Cen-

ter early in February 1918, to organize the upris-

ing as soon as twenty of its deputies from that

region returned to their home constituencies. The

center entrusted B. K. Fortunatov with organizing

KOMI

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

the military forces, while P. D. Klimushkin and

I. M. Brushvit engaged in political work to secure

cooperation with the deputies of other political par-

ties and other anti-Bolshevik forces in the region.

When the Czechoslovak Legion captured Samara

on June 8, 1918, the Revolutionary Center assumed

power in the name of the KOMUCH, in order to

govern, on behalf of the Constituent Assembly, not

only that city but also other cities liberated by the

joint forces of the Legion and the KOMUCH. These

joint operations captured Nikolayevsk on July 20,

Khvalinsk on July 11, Kunzetsk on July 15, Syzran

on July 10, Simbirsk on July 22, Sterlitamak on

July 15, and Kazan on August 6. As a result, a

beachhead more than 300 miles long was estab-

lished on the western bank of the Volga. The ob-

jective was to hold it until the arrival of the Allied

forces from Vladivostok to reestablish the Eastern

Front in Russia, according to the decision of the Al-

lied Supreme War Council of July 2. While this was

a feasible project—the entire Trans-Siberian Rail-

way from the Volga to that port was under the

control of the Czechs—the Allied forces never came,

because of President Woodrow Wilson’s opposition.

Although by the beginning of October the Le-

gion and the KOMUCH deployed on this beachhead

62,370 men, they were outnumbered by Trotsky’s

93,500 troops, a large number of them composed

of former German, Hungarian, and Austrian pris-

oners of war serving now in the Bolshevik ranks.

Samara was evacuated on October 8. The evacua-

tion of the administrative and political activities of

KOMUCH from Samara to Ufa terminated its four-

month-long effort to establish the constitutional

alternative to the Soviet rule in the Volga region.

And in Ufa, by accepting the authority, although

grudgingly, of the All Russia Provisional Govern-

ment established there on September 23, 1918, the

Komuch ceased to exist.

See also: ALLIED INTERVENTION; CIVIL WAR OF 1917–1922;

PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT; SOCIALIST REVOLUTION-

ARIES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fic, Victor M. (1998). The Rise of the Constitutional Al-

ternative to Soviet Rule. Provisional Governments of

Siberia and All-Russia: Their Quest for Allied Interven-

tion. Boulder, CO: East European Monographs; New

York: Columbia University Press.

ICTOR

M. F

KONDRATIEV, NIKOLAI DMITRIEVICH

(1892–1938), agricultural economist and business

cycle analyst.

Internationally renowned for his work on

long-run economic cycles, Nikolai Kondratiev was

born in 1892 in Ivanovskaya region. He studied

economics under Mikhail Tugan-Baranovsky and

became an important member of the Socialist Rev-

olutionary (SR) Party. His first major work was a

detailed study of the Russian grain market, and in

1921 he created the world-famous Conjuncture In-

stitute in Moscow. In 1922 he published his first

account of long cycles. These were approximately

fifty-year economic cycles, revealed in price levels

and trade statistics, which appeared to provoke (or

be provoked by) technological innovations and so-

cial upheavals, and which were caused by the pe-

riodic renewal of basic capital goods. This idea,

subsequently called the Kondratiev cycle, has been

very influential among non-mainstream econo-

mists and is even employed by historians and stock

market analysts, but it is fundamentally ques-

tioned by more orthodox economists.

From within the People’s Commissariat of

Agriculture, Kondratiev also wrote insightful com-

mentary on the economic development of Russia,

particularly on agriculture and planning method-

ology, and advocated a market-led industriali-

zation strategy for the USSR. This involved spe-

cializing in the export of agricultural produce in

the short term in order to fund industrial devel-

opment in the medium term, in line with the

Ricardian idea of comparative advantage. This ap-

proach received impetus from Kondratiev’s trip

overseas in 1924 and 1925, and was crystallized

in Kondratiev’s plan for agriculture and forestry

from 1924 to 1928. Such thinking was anathema

to Josef Stalin, who had Kondratiev arrested in

1930, jailed for eight years, and finally shot. While

in jail, Kondratiev wrote a book on economic

methodology as well as moving letters to his wife

on the human condition.

See also: AGRICULTURE; ECONOMIC GROWTH, SOVIET; IN-

DUSTRIALIZATION, SOVIET

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Barnett, Vincent. (1998). Kondratiev and the Dynamics of

Economic Development: Long Cycles and Industrial

Growth in Historical Context. London: Macmillan.

KONDRATIEV, NIKOLAI DMITRIEVICH

765

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

Makasheva, Natalia; Samuels, Warren J.; and Barnett,

Vincent, eds. (1998). The Works of Nikolai D. Kon-

dratiev. London: Pickering and Chatto.

INCENT

ARNETT

KONEV, IVAN STEPANOVICH

(1897–1973), military leader and marshal of the

Soviet Union.

Born to a peasant family in Viatsky, Konev en-

tered the Old Army in 1916 and rose to the rank

of junior officer before joining the Party and the

Red Army in 1918 and being appointed commissar

of Nikolskii District. During the civil war, he was

commander of Armored Train No. 105, attached to

the 5 Rifle Brigade, and fought in Siberia and the

Far East. From 1921 to 1922 he took part in

putting down the Kronshtadt Rebellion and was

appointed commissar in the staff in the National

Revolutionary Army of the Far East Republic.

Konev attended a higher course in the military

academy in 1926 and graduated from the Frunze

Academy in 1934. During the 1920s and 1930s he

commanded the 2 Rifle Division and later a corps.

Untouched by the purges, he was elected to the

Supreme Soviet in 1937, and in 1938 he took over

as the commander of the newly formed 2 Inde-

pendent Red Banner Far East Army. Despite rumors

to the contrary, Konev was not involved in fight-

ing the Japanese in Lake Khasan or Khalkhin Gol.

In 1939 he was elected as a candidate member of

the Central Committee. During 1940 and 1941, he

commanded the Transbaikal and North Caucasus

Military Districts. The latter was reinstituted shortly

before World War II as the 19 Army and was trans-

ferred to the Western Special Military District to be

mauled by the blitzkrieg.

In September, 1941, Konev took over the com-

mand of the Western Front, which was pushed

back in the Battles of Orel and Viasma by the Ger-

mans, and for a few anxious days in October con-

tact was lost with him. Josef Stalin threatened to

courtmartial him but was persuaded by Zhukov to

appoint Konev as commander of the newly formed

neighboring Kalinin Front, which played a signifi-

cant part in finally stopping the German advance

toward Moscow. In August 1942 Konev replaced

Zhukov as commander of the Western Front,

which failed to defeat the now well-entrenched Ger-

mans. For a brief period in March 1943 Konev com-

manded the Northwest Front before being

appointed commander of the Steppe Military Dis-

trict (later Steppe Front), the massive reserve force

formed by the Russians in anticipation of the Ger-

man attack against the Kursk Bulge. Konev’s units

were deployed sooner than planned, but managed,

with enormous losses, to persuade the Germans to

break off their offensive. With the German defeat

at Kursk, which Konev called the swan song of the

German panzers, the Red Army went on the of-

fensive with Konev commanding the 2 Ukraine

(October 1943) and later 1 Ukraine (May 1944)

Fronts.

Konev was involved in most of the major bat-

tles of the last two years of the war, which in-

cluded the crossing of several major rivers,

including the Dnepr and Vistula-Oder. During the

Battle of Berlin, Stalin used the rivalry between

Konev and Georgy Zhukov, who now commanded

the neighboring 1 Belorussian Front, to advance his

military and political goals. In the last phase of the

campaign, forces commanded by Konev captured

Prague. In both 1944 and 1945 Konev received the

title Hero of the Soviet Union. After the war, Konev

was appointed commander of the Central Group of

Forces, and in 1946 he took over the ground forces,

as well as being appointed Deputy Minister of the

Armed Forces. He lost the former position in 1950.

In 1951 he was appointed commander of the

Carpathian Military District.

In late 1952 Konev wrote to Stalin claiming

that he had been a victim of the Doctor’s Plot. In

December 1953 Konev presided over the military

court that sentenced to death Laurenti Beria and his

colleagues. In 1955–1956 Konev was once again

commander of the Ground Forces. From 1955 to

1960, he was also the first deputy minister of the

Armed Forces, and from May 1955 to June 1960

commander of the Warsaw Pact Forces, taking part

in putting down the 1956 revolution in Hungry.

In 1961–1962 Konev was commander of Soviet

forces in Germany before being transferred to the

military inspectorate. In 1965 he represented the

USSR at Winston Churchill’s funeral. Konev him-

self is buried at the Kremlin Wall. Konev was a typ-

ical Soviet commander in his indifference to losses

and was one of Stalin’s favorites.

See also: MILITARY, SOVIET AND POST-SOVIET; WORLD

WAR II; ZHUKOV, GEORGY KONSTANTINOVICH

KONEV, IVAN STEPANOVICH

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Polevoi, N. (1974). Polkovodets. Moscow: Politizdat.

Portugal’skii, R. M. (1985). Marshal I. S. Konev. Moscow:

Voenizdat.

ICHAEL

ARRISH

KONSTANTIN NIKOLAYEVICH

(1827–1892), political and naval figure, second son

of Tsar Nicholas I, brother of Tsar Alexander II, and

an advocate of liberal reform.

Because Konstantin Nikolayevich was not the

tsarevich, his designation as a general admiral at

the age of four marked him early for a career in

the Imperial Russian Navy. In 1853 he actually be-

gan to discharge the functions of his rank, and be-

tween 1855 and 1881 he simultaneously headed

the Naval Ministry and served as commander–in–

chief of Russian naval forces. A reformer of broad

vision and originality, he bore responsibility for

modernizing the navy, overseeing the transition

from sail to steam. After 1845 he was also hon-

orary president of the Imperial Russian Geographic

Society, from whose membership sprang a num-

ber of future Russian reformers. Characteristically,

the grand duke viewed his own naval bailiwick as

an engine of change, in contemporary parlance “a

ministry of progress,” engaged in training person-

nel for service in other branches of government. His

reform–minded protégés were known as the kon-

stantinovtsy.

An opponent of serfdom and government cen-

sorship, Konstantin Nikolayevich spurned his fa-

ther’s legacy to advocate openness, reform, and the

cause of liberal bureaucrats such as Nikolai Mi-

lyutin and Alexander Golovnin. The grand duke be-

lieved that peasants should receive title to their own

private holdings. In 1857, to speed deliberations

over serf emancipation, Tsar Alexander II appointed

him president of the Secret Committee on the peas-

ant question. Following emancipation in 1861,

Konstantin Nikolayevich served for two decades as

president of the Main Committee on Peasant Af-

fairs, which oversaw implementation of peas-

ant–related reform legislation.

Meanwhile, as a counter to growing Polish op-

position to Russian rule, the grand duke in March

1862 also received appointment to Warsaw as

viceroy and commander–in–chief. He was removed

in August 1863, after his liberal “policy of pacifi-

cation” had failed to forestall open rebellion. Nev-

ertheless, throughout the 1860s and 1870s he

remained a staunch advocate of his brother’s Great

Reforms, supporting them from various influential

governmental positions, including presidency of

the State Council between 1865 and 1881. In gen-

eral, the grand duke also backed the military poli-

cies of war minister Dmitry Milyutin, while

resisting the reactionary policies of Dmitry Tolstoy,

the minister of education. In 1866 Konstantin

Nikolayevich unsuccessfully sponsored moderate

legislation that would have introduced into the

State Council representatives from both zemstvo

and noble assemblies. During the last years of his

brother’s reign, he sided with the liberal policies of

Mikhail Loris–Melikov, Minister of the Interior.

Upon the accession of Tsar Alexander III in 1881,

the grand duke left state service.

A cultivated man, Konstantin Nikolayevich

read widely, maintained diverse interests, and played

the cello. He was accepted in intellectual circles and

KONSTANTIN NIKOLAYEVICH

767

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich, second son of Nicholas I.

ULTON

RCHIVE

maintained honorary membership in a number of

learned societies. He left important memoirs and an

impressive correspondence, much of which has

been published.

See also: ALEXANDER II; GREAT REFORMS; MILITARY, IMPE-

RIAL; MILITARY REFORMS; PEASANTRY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Lincoln, W. Bruce. (1990). The Great Reforms: Autocracy,

Bureaucracy, and the Politics of Change in Imperial Rus-

sia. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press.

ARISSA

AKHAROVA

KOPECK

The kopeck (kopeyka)—equal to one-hundredth of

the ruble—was first introduced as part of a 1534

monetary reform as equal to 0.68 grams of silver.

The silver coin was twice as heavy as the Mus-

covite denga (moskovka) and known as denga kopey-

naya, because—like its Lithuanian model—it

depicted a rider carrying a lance (kope). The name

novgorodka, initially much more common, reflected

the fact that it equaled in value the old Novgorod

denga. In spite of the reform, the Muscovite denga

and altyn (the latter equal to three kopecks) remained

the basic units of accounting until the eighteenth

century. The kopeck was the largest denomination

minted until the 1654 monetary reform, along with

the denga and the polushka (one-quarter kopeck).

Vasily Shuisky briefly minted gold kopecks, and

during Alexei Mikhailovich’s currency reform from

1655 to 1663, kopecks were minted of copper. Alexei

also began to mint ruble, poltina (50 kopecks), and

altyn coins, as well as, experimentally, the grosh

(two kopecks). In 1701 the polupoltinnik (25

kopecks), the grivna (10 kopecks), and the polu-

grivna (5 kopecks) were introduced.

Peter I’s monetary reform of 1704 introduced

a decimal system with the copper kopeck as the ba-

sic subdivision of the silver ruble, although silver

kopecks continued to be minted until 1718. Fifteen-

and twenty-kopeck coins were introduced in 1760.

Coins of up to 5 kopecks during the rest of the Im-

perial Era tended to be minted of copper, regardless

of transition between silver, gold, and paper rubles.

During the Soviet period, kopecks were minted of

an alloy of copper and zinc.

See also: ALEXEI MIKHAILOVICH; ALTYN; COPPER RIOTS;

DENGA; RUBLE; SHUISKY, VASILY IVANOVICH

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Spassky, Ivan Georgievich. (1968). The Russian Monetary

System: A Historico-Numismatic Survey, tr. Z. I. Gor-

ishina and rev. L. S. Forrer. Amsterdam: J. Schul-

man.

ARMO

T. K

OTILAINE

KOREANS

Korean emigration to Russia began in 1864 and

continued until the late 1920s, when the Commu-

nist authorities managed to close the border. This

migration was driven largely by the abundance of

arable land in the Russian Maritime Province, as

well as by political reasons. By 1917 there were

some 100,000 ethnic Koreans residing in the Russ-

ian far east.

During the Russian Civil War, Koreans actively

supported the Reds. However, in 1937 all Soviet

Koreans in the far east were forcefully relocated to

Central Asia, allegedly to undermine the Japanese

espionage networks within their ranks. Until the

late 1950s, Soviet Koreans largely engaged in farm-

ing, but after Stalin’s death they began to move to

the cities. By the 1980s Koreans had become one of

the best-educated ethnic groups in the USSR.

In 1945 the USSR acquired southern Sakhalin

from Japan. The area included a number of Korean

workers who had been moved there by the Japan-

ese colonial administration. Most of these workers

came from the southern provinces of Korea. Until

the 1970s they were not allowed to become citi-

zens of the USSR, and held either North Korean cit-

izenship or no citizenship at all. Within the Soviet

Korean community, these Sakhalin Koreans have

formed quite a distinct group.

Most of the Korean migrants initially spoke the

Hamgyong (northwestern) dialect, which is quite

different from standard Korean, although the So-

viet Korean schools taught the standard Seoul di-

alect. From the late 1950s young Soviet Koreans

switched to the exclusive use of Russian. Most Ko-

rean schools were closed in the late 1930s, but two

Korean-language newspapers and a Korean theater

survived. Korean was also taught as a second lan-

guage in some schools in Korean villages. In

Sakhalin secondary education in Korean was avail-

able until 1966 and a part of the Korean commu-

nity still uses Korean.

After the collapse of the USSR, most Koreans

remained in Uzbekistan (some 200,000) and Kaza-

KOPECK

768

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

khstan (100,000). The Russian Federation has an

estimated 140,000 ethnic Koreans. Their numbers

are rapidly increasing due to migration from Cen-

tral Asia, where Koreans are often discriminated

against. There is almost no return migration to

South Korea.

See also: CENTRAL ASIA; FAR EASTERN REGION; KOREA, RE-

LATIONS WITH; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, SOVIET; NA-

TIONALITIES POLICIES, TSARIST

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Kho, Songmu. (1987). Koreans in Soviet Central Asia.

Helsinki: Finnish Oriental Society.

NDREI

ANKOV

KOREAN WAR

Following the defeat of Japan in 1945, the Soviet

Union and the United States jointly occupied Ko-

rea, which had been ruled by Japan for four

decades. After the United States and USSR failed to

agree on the composition of a government for the

country, separate states were established in 1948

in the two occupation zones, each aspiring to ex-

tend its rule over the remainder of the country. In

1949 North and South Korea engaged in serious

fighting along their border, and on June 25, 1950,

the North Korean army launched a massive con-

ventional assault on South Korea, led by Soviet-

made tanks.

Because North Korea was closely controlled by

the Soviet Union and heavily dependent on Soviet

assistance, Western leaders unanimously viewed

the attack on South Korea as an act of Soviet ag-

gression. Fearing that a failure to repel such ag-

gression would encourage Moscow to mount

similar invasions elsewhere, leading possibly to a

third world war, the United Nations (UN) for the

first time in its history authorized the creation of

a multinational force to defend South Korea. The

United States commanded the UN forces and con-

tributed the overwhelming majority of troops, sup-

plemented by units from Canada, the United

Kingdom, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Lux-

embourg, Greece, Turkey, Ethiopia, South Africa,

Thailand, Australia, the Philippines, New Zealand,

and Colombia.

The invasion of South Korea also prompted the

United States to take a series of actions that shaped

the Cold War for the remainder of the USSR’s ex-

istence. The United States sent naval forces to pro-

tect Taiwan from an attack from the mainland,

strengthened its support for the French in Indo-

china, solidified NATO, moved toward the rearma-

ment of Germany, signed a separate peace treaty

with Japan, tripled its military spending, and be-

gan to station troops overseas indefinitely.

After UN forces advanced into North Korean

territory in October 1950, the People’s Republic of

China sent massive numbers of troops to prevent

a North Korean defeat. The Soviet Air Force also in-

tervened, thinly disguised as Chinese, beginning an

undeclared air war with the United States that was

the only sustained military engagement between

the two superpowers. By the spring of 1951 the

war had become a stalemate along a front roughly

following the prewar border. Negotiations for an

armistice began in the summer of 1951, but the

war was prolonged another two years, at the cost

of massive casualties and intensification of the East-

West conflict worldwide. The armistice signed in

July 1953 left intensely hostile states on the Ko-

rean peninsula, the North backed by the Soviet

Union and China, and the South by the United

States and its allies.

Russian archival documents made available in

the 1990s show that Western leaders were correct

in assuming that the decision to attack South Ko-

rea was made by Josef Stalin. His chief aim was to

prevent a Japanese attack on the Soviet Union

through the Korean peninsula, and he concluded

that the U.S. failure to prevent a communist vic-

tory in China indicated that it would not intervene

to prevent a similar victory in Korea. He was never

willing to commit Soviet ground forces but urged

the Chinese and North Koreans to keep fighting.

Immediately after Stalin’s death the new leadership

in Moscow decided to bring the war to an end.

See also: CHINA, RELATIONS WITH; COLD WAR; KOREANS;

KOREA, RELATIONS WITH; UNITED NATIONS; UNITED

STATES, RELATIONS WITH

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Stueck, William. (1995). The Korean War: An International

History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Weathersby, Kathryn. (1995). “To Attack, or Not to At-

tack? Stalin, Kim Il Sung and the Prelude to War.”

Cold War International History Project Bulletin 5:1–9.

Weathersby, Kathryn. (1995–1996). “New Russian Doc-

uments on the Korean War.” Cold War International

History Project Bulletin 6–7:30–84.

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Weathersby, Kathryn. (1998). “Stalin, Mao, and the End

of the Korean War.” In Brothers in Arms: The Rise and

Fall of the Sino-Soviet Alliance, 1945–1963, ed. Odd

Arne Westad. Washington, DC, and Stanford, CA:

Woodrow Wilson Center Press/Stanford University

Press.

ATHRYN

EATHERSBY

KOREA, RELATIONS WITH

The first contact between Russia and Korea can be

traced to the seventeenth century, but it was only

from 1858 to 1861, when Russia established its

control over the lower Amur River and acquired a

short (8.7-mile [14-kilometer]) land border with

Korea that the interaction of the two countries be-

gan in earnest. Formal diplomatic relations were

established on July 7, 1884, when a Russo-Korean

Treaty of Amity and Commerce was signed in Seoul.

From 1890 to 1905, Korea featured promi-

nently in Russian diplomatic designs as a major tar-

get of economic and political expansion in the Far

East. Russia was also heavily involved in Korean

domestic politics. Attempts to increase the Russian

influence in Korea and Manchuria were among the

reasons for the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 to 1905.

After the October Revolution in 1917, Soviet-

Korean exchanges remained limited in scope. The

Soviet Union was instrumental in the creation of

the local communist movement in Korea. Moscow

promoted the unification of leftist groups into the

short-lived Korean Communist Party (created in

1925 and disbanded in 1928). In the 1930s the

USSR also provided support to Korean communist

guerrillas in Manchuria.

World War II led to a dramatic change in the

situation. On August 11, 1945, the Soviet Army

crossed the Korean border and within a week es-

tablished control over the territory north of the

38th parallel (this parallel had been agreed upon

with the U.S. command as a provisional demarca-

tion line). Meanwhile, the southern half of Korea

was occupied by U.S. forces in September. From

1945 to 1947 the Soviet and American govern-

ments made some progress toward a compromise

over the future government of a united Korea. At

the same time, the Soviet military administration

was actively establishing a communist regime in

the north.

The Soviet administration backed Kim Il Sung,

a former Manchurian guerrilla commander who

had served in the Red Army since 1942. After the

Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) was

declared in September 1948, Russia was the first

country to establish diplomatic relations with the

new state (October 12, 1948). Relations with the

south, where the Republic of Korea was proclaimed

in 1948, were meanwhile completely frozen.

From 1948, Kim Il Sung lobbied Moscow for

permission to attack the South. Initially these sug-

gestions were rejected, but in late 1949 Josef Stalin

approved the proposal. Russian advisers were sent

to Pyongyang to plan the operations, which com-

menced on July 26, 1950. The North Korean armed

forces were trained by Soviet advisers and equipped

with Soviet weapons. During the war, the USSR

also dispatched several units of fighter jets to fight

on the North Korean side.

After the Korean War, Russia remained the

main source of military and economic aid for North

Korea. On July 6, 1961, a Treaty of Friendship, Co-

operation, and Mutual Assistance was signed in

Moscow. According to this treaty, Russia was

obliged to protect the DPRK militarily in the event

of a war (this clause was deleted from a new treaty

signed in 2000).

In the late 1950s Kim Il Sung refused to follow

the new policies of de-Stalinization. He skillfully

used the Sino-Soviet rivalry to extricate North Ko-

rea from Soviet control and proceeded with the con-

struction of his own brand of national Stalinism.

North Korea remained neutral in the Sino-Soviet

conflict and was more politically distant from the

USSR than any other communist state apart from

China and Albania. However, strategic considera-

tions forced Moscow to continue with its economic

aid to the North.

With the advent of perestroika, the changing

strategic outlook led the USSR to seek rapproche-

ment with the Republic of Korea (ROK), which was

seen as an important trading partner. In the late

1980s the USSR engaged in numerous unofficial

exchanges with Seoul, and on September 30, 1990,

official diplomatic relations between the USSR and

the ROK were finally established.

After the collapse of the USSR, the new Russ-

ian government refused to subsidize the trade with

its erstwhile ally. Trade collapsed (from 2.3 billion

USD in 1990 to 0.1 billion USD in 1995) and has

remained insignificant ever since (0.1 billion USD

in 2000). At the same time, attempts to influence

the security situation in northeast Asia and other

strategic considerations prompted Russia in the late

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1990s to increase its diplomatic exchanges with the

DPRK (including a visit by President Vladimir Putin

in 2000).

Meanwhile Russian exchanges with the ROK

were developing rapidly. By 2001 the trade volume

between the two countries had reached $2.9 bil-

lion. South Korean companies imported raw mate-

rials, scrap metal, and seafood from Russia while

selling finished goods, including consumer elec-

tronics, textiles, and cars.

See also: KAL 007; KOREANS; KOREAN WAR; PUTIN, VLADI-

MIR VLADIMIROVICH; RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Il Yung Chung, ed. (1992). Korea and Russia: Toward the

21st Century. Seoul: Sejong Institute.

Lensen George. (1982). Balance of Intrigue: International

Rivalry in Korea & Manchuria, 1884–1899. Tallahas-

see: University Presses of Florida.

Ree, Erik van. (1989). Socialism in One Zone: Stalin’s Pol-

icy in Korea, 1945–1947. Oxford: Berg Publishers.

NDREI

ANKOV

KORENIZATSYA

The USSR’s founding agreement of 1922 and its

Constitution of 1924 gave it the form of a federal

state that was organized according to national

principles. This marked the beginning of a phase of

limited autonomy for the non-Russian ethnic

groups living in Soviet Russia and the blossoming

of nationalism, which sometimes went as far as the

actual formation of nations. Not only the large na-

tionalities, but even the smaller, scattered peoples

were given the opportunity to form their own na-

tional administrative territories. The will of the

Communist Party—which was expressed in the

program of the Twelfth Party Congress in 1923—

was that all Soviet institutions in non-Russian ar-

eas, including courts, administrative authorities, all

economic bodies, the labor unions, even the party

organs themselves, should consist as much as pos-

sible of local nationality cadres. Korenizatsya was

supposed to protect and nurture the autochthonous

population’s way of life, its customs and traditions,

and its writing system and language. Up to the

middle of the 1930s, korenizatsya was a central

political slogan whose program was diametrically

opposed to a policy of Russification and national

repression.

Especially in the 1920s and the beginning of

the 1930s, korenizatsya (which is also referred to

in research literature as indigenization or Stalin’s

nativization campaign) achieved significant suc-

cess. Forty-eight nationalities, including the Turk-

men, Kirgiz, Komi, and Yakut peoples, received a

written language for the first time. The status of

the Ukrainian language greatly increased. In Be-

larus a strong and lasting national awakening oc-

curred. The use of the national languages in schools

and as administrative languages was, without a

doubt, a nation-forming factor. The proportion of

national cadres greatly increased in all sectors. At-

tributes of nation states, such as national acade-

mies of science, national theater, national literature,

national historical traditions, and the like, were es-

tablished or consolidated and staffed by indigenous

personnel.

However, with the social revolution that started

in 1929, the policy of korenizatsya got into a

conflict that some researchers consider to have

caused its end. The forced industrialization pro-

moted centralization and Russification. The mod-

ernization demand of the Bolsheviks collided with

the promise of korenizatsya to respect local cus-

toms. The women’s policy in Central Asia is an ex-

ample of this conflict. Collectivization was even

more strongly perceived as an attack on the na-

tionalities. National autonomy, which could have

provided a framework for organized resistance to

collectivization, was revoked by the Stalinist state

power and increasingly relegated to formal ele-

ments. National communists were eliminated.

Many of the indigenous elites produced by the ko-

renizatsya program frequently did not survive the

purges of 1937 and 1938. However, they were re-

placed by new, compliant cadres of the same eth-

nic group.

Especially when viewed against the background

of the rigid Russification policy of tsarist Russia,

the korenizatsya policy can be considered to repre-

sent significant progress in the treatment of the na-

tionalities. In the cultural area the achievements of

korenizatsya still continue to have an effect up to

the present day. They provided an important foun-

dation for the relatively smooth emergence of in-

dependent national states after the breakup of the

USSR in 1991. Of course, it should be noted that

the federal structure of the Soviet State had a cen-

trally organized Communist Party opposite it,

which, together with the state security organs, was

always in a position to limit national autonomy,

or, if the party required it, even to eliminate it

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

entirely. Thus, in the time after 1935, the blos-

soming of the nationalities was purely a propa-

ganda backdrop, in front of which the Father of

Nations (that is, Stalin) staged his increasingly

Great Russia–oriented policy.

See also: KOMI; NATIONALISM IN THE SOVIET UNION; NA-

TIONALITIES POLICIES, SOVIET; SAKHA AND YAKUTS;

TURKMENISTAN AND TURKMEN; UKRAINE AND

UKRAINIANS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Martin, Terry. (2001). The Affirmative Action Empire. Na-

tions and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939.

Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.

Simon, Gerhard. (1991). Nationalism and Policy toward

the Nationalities in the Soviet Union: From Totalitar-

ian Dictatorship to Post-Stalinist Society. Boulder, CO:

Westview Press.

Smith, Jeremy. (1999). The Bolsheviks and the National

Question, 1917–1923. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

OBERT

AIER

KORMCHAYA KNIGA

The Kormchaya Kniga, also known as the Naviga-

tor’s Chart (Map) or The Pilot’s Book, is the Slavic

version of the Greek laws known as the Nomocanon.

The first Slavic translation of the Greek Nomocanon

was probably made by St. Methodius in the sec-

ond half of the ninth century. It included the

canons found in the “Syntagma of Fifty Titles” and

the first Slavic manual of laws called the “Court

Law of the People” (Zakon sudny lyudem). The Ko-

rmchaya usually contained information such as

Apostolic canons, decrees of the first four Ecu-

menical Councils, resolutions of local synods, in-

structions of the Church Fathers, and imperial

edicts on church issues. It became the guide for ec-

clesiastical courts and church affairs in Rus. Before

the seventeenth century, no single copy of the Ko-

rmchaya served as the official code of the Russian

Church. A copy assumed local authority when a

bishop made it the law of his eparchy. Conse-

quently, by the beginning of the seventeenth cen-

tury, the diversity of materials in the many existing

copies created confusion. Around 1649 Patriarch

Joseph, concerned by this ambiguity, arranged for

a correct version of church laws to be published.

In 1650, the first printed Kormchaya appeared, but

three years later Patriarch Nikon published a re-

vised version, which, although severely criticized

by the Old Believers, remained the official code. The

Holy Synod reprinted Nikon’s version in 1787 and

reissued it in 1804, 1810, 1816, and 1834. In 1889

Patriarch Joseph’s Kormchaya was reprinted and

used by a sect of Old Believers. It was reprinted

again in St. Petersburg in 1912 and 1913.

See also: NIKON, PATRIARCH; OLD BELIEVERS; PATRIARCHY;

ORTHODOXY; RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dewey, H. W., and Kleimola, Ann M., tr. (1977). “Za-

kon sudnyi liudem.” Michigan Slavic Studies 14.



ek, Ivan. (1964). Kormc



aja kniga: Studies on the Chief

Code of Russian Canon Law. Rome: Pont. Institutum

Orientalium Studiorum.

ARTIN

IMNIK

KORMLENIE

Old Russian term that describes a specific system

of remunerating state officials.

Loosely translated as “feeding,” Kormlenieu

meant that princes awarded their servitors lands

from which tribute could be extracted. Part of what

was taken would be passed on to the prince, and

the remainder would be kept.

In a situation of general poverty, where there

was insufficient money to pay for needed troops,

it may have seemed rational to offer kormlenie, but

as that system came to form the basis for financ-

ing an emerging state bureaucracy, its serious

drawbacks became apparent.

One problem was the lack of effective controls

over how much was extracted; another, that the

subjects would be drawn into complex patterns of

personalized relations, where all distinctions be-

tween public and private were eroded. Above all,

kormlenieu constituted a serious obstacle to the in-

troduction of a money economy.

Under Tsar Peter the Great an attempt was

made to replace kormleniei by the payment of

wages, but under his successors persistent short-

ages of money caused a reversal to the old policies

of allowing officials to live off the land.

Even in the Soviet era, one might well interpret

the positions of local party bosses as similar to

those of the holders of old kormlenie, who were al-

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