Encyclopedia of Russian History

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lowed to help themselves to whatever they felt that

their fiefdoms could offer.

See also: INTELLIGENTSIA; SIBERIA

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Korolenko, Vladimir Galaktionovich. (1972). The History

of My Contemporary. New York: Oxford University

Press.

Korolenko, Vladimir Galaktionovich. (1971). Makar’s

Dream, and Other Stories. Freeport, NY: Books for Li-

braries Press.

Korolenko, Vladimir Galaktionovich, and Antony

Lambton. (1986). Bad Company and Other Stories.

London: Quartet.

OHANNA

RANVILLE

KORSH THEATER

Founded in 1882 by entrepreneur F. A. Korsh

(1852–1923), this was the first successful private,

commercial theater established after the repeal of

the government’s monopoly on theaters in the two

capitals, Moscow and St. Petersburg. Built in the

heart of Moscow’s bustling theater district, the Ko-

rsh Theater was designed to meet four professional

objectives: to respond to audiences’ changing aes-

thetic demands; to increase performance opportu-

nities for provincial actors; to present productions

of new plays, which led to special Friday night per-

formances of experimental works; and to make

both the Russian and the international dramaturgy

available to students, which Korsh accomplished by

offering free Sunday morning performances. The

playwrights whose works played in Russia first at

the Korsh included Hermann Sudermann, Edmond

Rostand, Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg, George

Bernard Shaw, and, perhaps most significantly,

Anton Chekhov. Performers who advanced their

careers here included comedian Vladimir Davydov,

heartthrob Alexander Lensky, and light opera

celebrities Lidia Yavorskaya and Maria Blyumen-

tal-Tamarina. The theater itself, designed by na-

tionalist architect M. N. Chichagov, was the first

to use electric lighting.

Korsh could afford his artistic innovations be-

cause of the extent to which he catered to the crowd,

exemplifying the “dictatorship of the box office.”

The most popular, and prolific, playwright in his

employ was I. I. Myasnitsky (Baryshev), who kept

Korsh supplied with farces, comedies of topical is-

sues with protagonists from all social backgrounds,

such as “The Old Woman Makes a Fool of Herself.”

The theater’s most famously popular production

was the 1892 staging of Victorien Sardou’s com-

edy about Napoleon’s ex-washer woman, Madame

Sans-Gene, translated by Korsh himself, and featur-

ing the latest fashions directly from Paris.

Until its incorporation by the Soviet govern-

ment in 1925, the Korsh Theater offered a central

locale where new ideas about Russian culture were

contested, reshaped, sometimes vulgarized, but al-

ways celebrated.

See also: CHEKHOV, ANTON PAVLOVICH; THEATER

BIBLIOGRAPHY

McReynolds, Louise.(2003). Russia at Play: Leisure Activ-

ities at the End of the Tsarist Era. Ithaca, NY: Cornell

University Press.

OUISE

EYNOLDS

KORYAKS

The Koryaks (Koryaki) are an indigenous Paleo-Asi-

atic people living in northeast Siberia, on the north-

ern part of the Kamchatka Peninsula and on the

adjoining mainland from the Taigonos Peninsula to

the Bering Sea (a total of 152,000 square miles, or

393,680 square kilometers). The traditional roam-

ing area of the nomadic Koryaks has been west of

the Kamchatka Central Range, up to the Itelmen set-

tlements. In addition to Koryaks, Itelmens, Chukchi,

and Evenki have also lived on this territory for

centuries. Administratively the Koryaks live in the

Koryak Autonomous Region (okrug), a territory ap-

proximately the size of Arizona and which is one

of the ten autonomous regions recognized in the

Russian Constitution of 1993.

The Koryak Autonomous Region is just one

part of the larger Kamchatka Peninsula, which in-

cludes the Karaginsky and Komandorsky islands in

the Bering Sea. With an area of about 490,425

square miles, the countries England, Portugal, Bel-

gium, and Luxembourg together could be placed on

the territory of Kamchatka. The peninsula contains

many volcanoes, some of them active. The Koryak

territory is mostly forest tundra, as well as tundra

in the subarctic climate belt. The highest tempera-

ture in the summer is 34° centigrade and the low-

est in the winter (in the central and northern parts

of the peninsula) falls to about –49° centigrade.

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The term koryak derives from the word for rein-

deer (kor). When combined with its prepositional

suffix, korak means “with (or at) the reindeer.”

This is not surprising, given the Koryak’s heavy re-

liance on reindeer for a wide range of bare essen-

tials, including meat, transportation, household

articles, fat (to light indoor lamps), materials for

constructing mobile dwellings (yarangas), bones

(for tools and household items), and hides (to make

clothes, footwear, and even diapers and sanitary

napkins). When referring to themselves, however,

the Koryaks do not use the term. Instead, they call

themselves either nimilany (“residents of a settled

village”) or chavchuvens (nomadic reindeer people).

In contrast to some other non-Russian nation-

alities, such as the Tuvinians, the Koryaks are a

minority in their own region. Russians and Ukrain-

ians make up more than 75 percent of the total

population. The remaining 25 percent are Koryaks,

Chukchi, Itelmens, and Evenki. Koryaks make up

only one-fifth of the indigenous Siberian popula-

tion.

See also: EVENKI; NORTHERN PEOPLES; NATIONALITIES

POLICIES, SOVIET; SIBERIA

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Berdahl, Daphne, and Bunzl, Matti. (2000). Altering

States: Ethnographies of Transition in Eastern Europe

and the Former Soviet Union. Ann Arbor: University

of Michigan Press.

Humphrey, Caroline. (2002). The Unmaking of Soviet Life:

Everyday Economies after Socialism. Ithaca, NY: Cor-

nell University Press.

Keay, John. (2002). The Mammoth Book of Explorers. New

York: Carroll & Graf.

Reid, Anna. (2003). The Shaman’s Coat: A Native History

of Siberia. New York: Walker & Company.

Whybrow, Helen. (2003). Dead Reckoning: Great Adven-

ture Writing from the Golden Age of Exploration,

1800–1900. New York: W. W. Norton.

OHANNA

RANVILLE

KORZHAKOV, ALEXANDER VASILIEVICH

(b. 1950), aide to President Boris Yeltsin.

Alexander Vasilievich Korzhakov was the most

trusted aide of President Boris Yeltsin until Yeltsin

dismissed him in 1996. From 1970 until 1989 he

worked in Administration 9 of the KGB, which pro-

vided personal security for senior Soviet officials.

From 1985 to 1987 he was a bodyguard to Yeltsin,

and remained loyal to him after Yeltsin was polit-

ically disgraced in 1987. For this the KGB dismissed

him in 1989. During Yeltsin’s political resurrection

Korzhakov resumed work as his bodyguard. From

1991 he headed the Presidential Security Service

(PSS) with the rank of major general, and increas-

ingly became a close political adviser to Yeltsin. In

August 1991 he played an important role in

Yeltsin’s successful defeat of the three-day hard-

line coup.

In October 1993, Korzhakov apparently played

a key role in persuading the defense minister to

have the military storm the parliament. Also, he

personally arrested the leaders of the armed oppo-

sition.

Later he turned the PSS into what Yeltsin called

his personal “mini-KGB.” He built up departments

for personal surveillance, political dirty tricks, and

political and economic analysis. He encouraged

Yeltsin to become politically more authoritarian

and less liberal on economic reform, and even ad-

vocated specific policies on oil. As he freely admit-

ted in his revealing memoir about Yeltsin, he played

a major role in recruiting Boris Berezovsky and

other rich businessmen to support Yeltsin finan-

cially and through their media. Thus he helped turn

them into oligarchs with political clout. In 1995 he

even arranged for Berezovsky to control, finan-

cially and otherwise, the newly created television

company, Public Russian Television. It was impor-

tant, he argued, to have a major channel that was

firmly pro-administration and would counter the

widespread criticism of the Kremlin in the existing

media.

In 1996 Yeltsin appointed Korzhakov to one of

the two teams that organized his reelection bid, the

team headed by Oleg Soskovets. But Korzhakov

feared that Yeltsin would lose, and therefore urged

him to find a pretext to postpone the election and

close down the parliament, or Duma. In March,

Yeltsin took his advice, but opposition in the cab-

inet thwarted his plans at the last minute. In May

he named Korzhakov his first adviser. In June,

however, when Korzhakov and his allies clashed

with the second election team in a fierce struggle

for influence over Yeltsin, the latter suddenly opted

for the second team, headed by Anatoly Chubais,

and dismissed Korzhakov.

In February 1997 Korzhakov was elected to the

Duma as an independent from Tula. In 1999 he

KORZHAKOV, ALEXANDER VASILIEVICH

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

was reelected on a Fatherland ticket and served on

the Defense Committee. During the late 1990s he

gave lengthy interviews detailing numerous al-

legedly corrupt activities of Yeltsin, his family,

Chubais, and others, but did not discuss his own

business affairs. He was never sued for libel or slan-

der, apparently because the people he exposed be-

lieved he had evidence for what he said. Of special

significance were his repeated accounts of how

Berezovsky gave Yeltsin three million dollars in

1994, claiming this was a payment of royalties on

Yeltsin’s memoirs, when in fact the book had

earned negligible royalties.

In 2001 Korzhakov was instrumental in launch-

ing the monthly investigative newspaper Stringer.

See also: AUGUST 1991 PUTSCH; OCTOBER 1993 EVENTS;

SOSKOVETS, OLEG NIKOLAYEVICH; STATE SECURITY,

ORGANS OF; YELTSIN, BORIS NIKOLAYEVICH

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Reddaway, Peter, and Glinski, Dmitri. (2001). The

Tragedy of Russia’s Reforms: Market Bolshevism against

Democracy. Washington, DC: U.S. Institute of Peace

Press.

ETER

EDDAWAY

KOSMODEMYANSKAYA, ZOYA

(1923–1941), partisan girl known as “Tanya” in

World War II and canonized as Russian war hero-

ine; also known as the Soviet Joan of Arc, she was

posthumously awarded the honorary title Hero of

the Soviet Union.

At the outbreak of war in June 1941, Zoya

Kosmodemyanskaya, member of the Moscow Kom-

somol (Communist Youth), volunteered for the

partisan movement. According to the official So-

viet version, in December 1941, while carrying out

a military assignment behind the front line, she

was caught by the Germans, arrested, tortured, and

finally hanged.

The young girl’s tragic end was used as pro-

paganda to arouse hatred for the cruel enemy and

convey the necessity for vengeance. Written for this

purpose, the numerous reports, which emphasized

her courage, steadfastness, and exceptional strength

of resistance, portrayed her as a true Soviet model

and saint who had endured torture and chosen

death over betraying her comrades—a model ex-

ample for sacrificial death in the “Holy War”

against fascism.

She shared the fate of many other daring and

fearless compatriots who were popularized as heroes

and heroines in the same manner. Yet Kosmode-

myanskaya differed in that the public responded

with compassion and affection, even abroad. Her

unusual popularity cannot be explained by her

heroic exploit alone, being that many others were

called heroes for the same or similar behavior in

fighting the enemy. Rather the visual and verbal

depiction of her short life and tragic fate by several

outstanding artists, poets, and filmmakers con-

tributed to the unusually high degree of veneration.

In additon to dozens of publications on her ex-

emplary life, bearing true hagiographic qualities,

including poems (one by Margarita Aliger), songs,

paintings, plays, it was a documentary photograph

published in the newspaper Pravda on the occasion

of her death that drew the public’s attention be-

cause it broke with the traditional Soviet style of

KOSMODEMYANSKAYA, ZOYA

777

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya hanged by the Nazis. © H

ULTON

RCHIVE

visual representation. Most influential, however,

was the film Zoya directed by Lev Arnshtam (1944).

The beauty and the performance of the actress

Galina Vodyanitskaya in the role of Kosmode-

myanskaya left a lasting impression in popular

consciousness that turned the partisan heroine into

a symbol of identity for more than one postwar

generation of young Soviet women imitating her

in dress, hairdo, and manner.

In the post-Soviet debate on the legend and re-

ality of Soviet war heroes, some voices turned her

into a henchman of Stalin’s plan of “scorched

earth,” killed by the villagers, not by the Germans;

others raised questions about her identity. Still,

Kosmodemyanskaya is one of the few members of

the Soviet pantheon of heroes who did not fall vic-

tim to the strong iconoclastic movement of the

1990s. Kosmodemyanskaya’s place in history lies

beyond historical truth; it is founded on her power

as a legend that became part of collective memory.

Her grave can be found in the Moscow

Novodevishche Cemetery, a special museum and a

monument by M. G. Manizer in the village Petr-

ishchevo, the place of her execution, near Moscow.

See also: WORLD WAR II

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Kosmodemyanskaya, Liubov. (1942). My daughter Zoya.

Moscow: Foreign Language Press.

Sartorti, Rosalinde. (1995). “On the Making of Heroes,

Heroines, and Saints.” In Culture and Entertainment

in Wartime Russia, ed. Richard Stites. Bloomington:

Indiana University Press.

OSALINDE

ARTORTI

KOSYGIN, ALEXEI NIKOLAYEVICH

(1904–1980), Soviet prime minister.

Alexei Kosygin was born into a worker’s fam-

ily in St. Petersburg. After finishing schooling at

the Leningrad Cooperative Technical School in

1924, he moved to Siberia and worked in a series

of positions in the cooperative movement. It was

while in Siberia, in 1927, that he joined the Com-

munist Party. After returning to Leningrad he com-

pleted further studies at the Leningrad Textile

Institute in 1935. Reflecting the opportunities

opened up by the Stalinist terror and the patron-

age of Leningrad party boss Andrei Zhdanov, Kosy-

gin moved rapidly from being a foreman and shop

superintendent in the Zhelyabov factory through

a series of industrial, city, and party posts, until in

1939 he became people’s commissar for the textile

industry. From April 1940 until March 1953 he

was deputy chairman of the Council of People’s

Commissars (from 1946 Council of Ministers), or

deputy prime minister; from June 1943 until

March 1946 he was also prime minister of Russia.

During this period, he likewise held a series of min-

isterial appointments, principally in the light in-

dustry and consumer goods industry areas.

Kosygin had become a full member of the Party’s

Central Committee in 1939, a candidate member of

the Politburo in March 1946, and a full member in

February 1948.

Kosygin’s upward trajectory was halted in con-

nection with the fall of Zhdanov and the Leningrad

Affair. Although one of the intended victims of this

affair, Kosygin survived, but at the Nineteenth

Party Congress in 1952 he was dropped to candi-

date status in the Presidium (as the Politburo was

then called). Following Stalin’s death and the con-

solidation of the position of one of Kosygin’s ene-

mies, Georgy Malenkov, Kosygin was dropped

altogether from the enlarged Presidium in March

1953. At the same time, he was removed as deputy

prime minister. He retained a ministerial position

in the consumer goods/light industry sector and

was restored as deputy prime minister in Decem-

ber 1953. He held this post until December 1956

when he became deputy chair (and from 1959

chair) of the state planning body. With Malenkov’s

fall as part of the Antiparty Group, in June 1957

Kosygin was restored to candidate membership of

the Presidium and in the following month to the

deputy prime ministership. He retained this post,

from May 1960 as first deputy chairman, until Oc-

tober 1964, when he became chairman of the

Council of Ministers, or prime minister. In May

1960 he also became a full member of the Central

Committee Presidium.

The fluctuations in Kosygin’s official positions

in the early to mid-1950s reflect the vicissitudes of

factional politics in the late-Stalin and early post-

Stalin periods. In particular, Kosygin’s fortunes

seem to have been related inversely to those of

Malenkov. Khrushchev’s triumph over the Anti-

party Group consolidated Kosygin’s position near

the apex of Soviet politics, but it was Kosygin’s

turning against Khrushchev that later allowed

Kosygin to attain prime ministership. When the

Soviet leadership tired of Khrushchev, they turned

KOSYGIN, ALEXEI NIKOLAYEVICH

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

to Kosygin and Brezhnev. In the initial post-

Khrushchev period, there seemed to be a general

balance both between these two leaders and within

the broader party leadership. Initially Kosygin was

actively involved in foreign policy, including over-

seeing the Tashkent Agreement between India and

Pakistan in 1965, negotiating with U.S. President

Lyndon B. Johnson at Glassboro in 1967, and con-

ducting key talks with the Chinese in 1965 and

1969. He was the sponsor of the so-called Liber-

man economic reforms (also known as the Kosy-

gin reforms) in September 1965, which sought to

generate greater autonomy from party control for

the economic managers, although he also tightened

central direction of the economy by eliminating the

regional economic councils. Kosygin basically

sought the more efficient management of the econ-

omy, but with the hostile Soviet reaction to the

Prague Spring, the likelihood of liberalizing moves

in the economy was eliminated. The suppression of

the Prague Spring marked the ascendancy of Brezh-

nev and the clear subordination of Kosygn, who

remained prime minister until his retirement in Oc-

tober 1980, and therefore through most of the pe-

riod that Gorbachev would later call the “era of

stagnation”. He was more a technocrat than a

politician, but bears some of the responsibility for

the Soviet Union’s perilous economic situation dur-

ing the 1980s.

See also: BREZHNEV, LEONID ILICH; KOSYGIN REFORMS;

LENINGRAD AFFAIR; MALENKOV, GEORGY MAXIM-

ILYANOVICH; ZHDANOV, ANDREI ALEXANDROVICH

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Breslauer, George W. (1982). Khrushchev and Brezhnev as

Leaders: Building Authority in Soviet Politics. London:

Allen & Unwin.

Gelman, Harry. (1984). The Brezhnev Politburo and the De-

cline of Détente. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Tatu, Michel. (1968). Power in the Kremlin: From

Khrushchev to Kosygin. New York: Viking.

RAEME

ILL

KOSYGIN REFORMS

After Nikita S. Khrushchev was removed in Octo-

ber 1964, Alexei N. Kosygin (1904–1980) became

chairman of the USSR Council of the Ministers, as

part of a duumvirate with Leonid Brezhnev. Within

months the new leadership restored the industrial

ministerial structure, which Khrushchev had re-

placed with regional sovnarkhozy (economic coun-

cils). Gosplan regained its prime role in economic

planning.

In September 1965, Kosygin announced a com-

prehensive planning reform that implemented some

of the ideas of the Kharkov economist Yevsey Liber-

man and many other industrial economists who

had urged relying on the profit indicator instead of

detailed and numerous directives, which often con-

flicted with each other. Profitability had for some

time been one of the indicators of plan fulfillment,

though the main indicator was still gross output

(valovaya produktsia, orval for short), as compared

with planned levels. Now the directives would be

seven in number, with profitability on capital (at

controlled prices, not market ones)—or sales, for

consumer goods firms—to constitute the main

bonus-forming indicator. Instead of four standard

indicators for use of labor, there would be only one:

the wage fund.

Other obligatory tasks were to be sales (real-

izatsiya), assortment, payments to the budget,

centralized investments, new techniques to be in-

troduced, and mandatory supply tasks. The infa-

mous val would be abandoned, along with the cost

reduction target, both of which jeopardized qual-

ity of production. Depending on the enterprise’s

success in increasing sales and the profit rate—and

subject to fulfillment of the other tasks in plan—

retained profits would go to new investments, so-

cial facilities and housing, and extra worker

bonuses. This provision was intended to enhance

material incentives for those engaged at the enter-

prise. Though differentiated and quite complicated,

these norms were supposed to be stable. After pay-

ing a new capital charge of 6 percent, more than

half of net profits usually went to the state, how-

ever, not to enterprise funds. New enterprise whole

prices would be announced by 1967 but still based

on costs, not market scarcity. This would permit

the end to subsidies for loss-making enterprises.

One advantage of the sovnarkhozy system was

retained: The regional inter-industrial supply de-

pots were preserved under the State Committee on

Material Supplies (Gossnsab). Wholesale trade was

thereby to be expanded. Several other state com-

mittees were also established for price setting and

for science and technology. Concern for technolog-

ical change was also reflected in the creation of sci-

ence-production associations, intended to make a

better connection between research, technology,

and the introduction of new goods.

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

No sooner were these reforms implemented

than significant modifications had to be introduced

to regulate the size and distribution of enterprise

funds. New targets were added for consumer goods

and quality; later in the 1970s, labor productivity,

gross output, and other targets returned to the

mandatory list. Supply problems persisted; little

wholesale trade occurred.

Most specialists believe that the Kosygin re-

forms failed because of continuing imbalances be-

tween feasible supplies and the demands of the

Party-controlled government, the unwillingness to

release prices, and bureaucratic resistance to any

radical change. But tinkering and experiments con-

tinued until 1982. Perestroika would revive many

of the basic ideas of the Kosygin reforms, with a

very different denouement: chaos and collapse

rather than reversal and stagnation.

See also: ECONOMIC GROWTH, SOVIET; KOSYGIN, ALEXEI

NIKOLAYEVICH; LIBERMAN, YEVSEI GRIGOREVICH; PER-

ESTROIKA; SOVNARKHOZY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Gregory, Paul R., and Stuart, Robert C. (1998). Russian

and Soviet Economic Performance and Structure, 6th ed.

Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Nove, Alec. (1986). The Soviet Economic System, 3rd ed.

Boston: Allen & Unwin.

ARTIN

C. S

PECHLER

KOTOSHIKHIN, GRIGORY KARPOVICH

(c. 1630–1667), Muscovite official, émigré, and au-

thor.

As an under-secretary of the Muscovite

Chancery for Foreign Affairs, Grigory Kotoshikhin

was one of the few seventeenth-century Russians

allowed to travel to the West, on diplomatic mis-

sions to Poland and Sweden. In 1663 he began to

give information on foreign policy to the Swedish

agent in Moscow. The following year he fled

abroad, finally settling in Stockholm. At the behest

of the Swedish government he compiled a lengthy

description of the Muscovite state. Fatally injuring

his landlord in a drunken quarrel, Kotoshikhin was

sentenced to death. On the eve of his execution he

embraced the Lutheran faith.

Kotoshikhin’s manuscript was soon translated

into Swedish but then forgotten. Rediscovered in

the late 1830s, it was published in Russia in 1840

under the title On Russia in the Reign of Alexis

Mikhailovich. Though its importance as a histori-

cal source was immediately recognized, the evalu-

ation of Kotoshikhin’s account in Russia and the

Soviet Union would long be influenced by ideolog-

ical considerations. In the nineteenth century,

Westernizers praised Kotoshikhin for exposing

Muscovite backwardness, while Slavophiles con-

demned him for blackening Muscovite reality. In

the late Stalin period and beyond, the dictates of

hyper-nationalism obligated scholars to excoriate

Kotoshikhin as a traitor who defamed his country

to please his Swedish hosts.

There are indeed a few passages in which Ko-

toshikhin lashes out at Muscovite ignorance, dis-

honesty, superstition, and xenophobia and lauds

the “blessed freedom” of the West. But these pas-

sionate outbursts, almost certainly interpolations

in the original text, are in striking contrast with

the content and tone of the rest of the account,

which is severely factual and almost entirely free

of broad generalizations and value judgments. The

level of accuracy is remarkably high, particularly

for someone writing in a foreign country with no

sources other than the Law Code of 1649. Koto-

shikhin emphasized those topics that were of

interest to the Swedish government; these corre-

sponded well with what he knew best. There are

lengthy descriptions of the central administrative

institutions, diplomatic protocol, and court cere-

monial; somewhat shorter discussions of the

nobility, the army, provincial administration, mer-

chants and trade, and the marriage customs of the

upper class; and virtually nothing on the peasantry

or the Orthodox Church. Kotoshikhin portrays a

government of legal norms and bureaucratic

process, and provides strong though not unim-

peachable evidence on the constitutional role of the

estates of the realm in electing or confirming each

tsar from 1584 to 1645.

On Russia in the Reign of Alexis Mikhailovich has

been republished a number of times (1859, 1884,

1906, 1984, and twice in 2000; Pennington, 1980,

is the definitive edition of the text, with exhaustive

linguistic commentaries). It remains a uniquely

valuable source. No other Muscovite ever wrote

anything comparable, and no Western traveler ever

had Kotoshikhin’s expert knowledge.

Kotoshikhin was born ahead of his time. From

the reign of Peter the Great onward, Russians were

able to adopt Western ways and values while re-

KOTOSHIKHIN, GRIGORY KARPOVICH

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

maining loyal to their native land. In Kotoshikhin’s

generation this was not yet possible.

See also: ALEXEI MIKHAILOVICH; LAW CODE OF 1649;

SLAVOPHILES; WESTERNIZERS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Weickhardt, George. (1990). “Kotoshikhin: An Evalua-

tion and Interpretation.” Russian History 17:

127–154.

ENJAMIN

ROFF

KOVALEV, SERGEI ADAMOVICH

(b. 1930), dissident, politician, human rights ac-

tivist.

Sergei Kovalev became famous as a dissident in

the 1970s and later as a politician working for hu-

man rights in post-communist Russia. Trained as

a biologist, he spent much of his early career at

Moscow State University. In 1969 he was dis-

missed for dissident activity. From 1970 to 1974

he worked in a research station.

In 1967 Kovalev became involved in human

rights circles, and soon developed a close friendship

with fellow dissident Andrei Sakharov. Like

Sakharov, he believed in the strategy of insisting

on strict application by the authorities of the ex-

isting laws, and also of working for law reform.

In 1968 he was one of the anonymous founders

and editors of the samizdat (typewritten self-pub-

lished) journal A Chronicle of Current Events, which

documented violations of human rights and circu-

lated covertly from hand to hand. In 1969 he was

a founding member of the Action Group to Defend

Civil Rights in the USSR.

In 1974 he was arrested and eventually tried

in closed court. Sentenced to seven years in a strict-

regime labor camp, he served his whole term, tak-

ing part in numerous protests and hunger strikes

by prisoners. On his release he was forced to live

from 1984 to 1987 in the remote town of Kalinin.

In the late 1980s Kovalev took part in various

initiatives aimed at creating a civil society. In 1990

he was elected on a Democratic Russia ticket to the

RSFSR’s Congress of People’s Deputies and its Su-

preme Soviet. He chaired the latter’s Human Rights

Committee, which passed important legislation

on refugees, citizenship, procedures for emergency

rule, the exculpation of political prisoners, and par-

liamentary supervision of the security services.

In the fall of 1993 he opposed Yeltsin’s pro-

roguing of the parliament, but did not support the

parliamentary opposition. In October Yeltsin ap-

pointed him chair of his Commission on Human

Rights, and the political movement Russia’s Choice

elected him chair of its council. In December he was

elected to the new parliament, and as of 2003 has

remained a deputy, switching his allegiance in 2001

from the successor of Russia’s Choice to Yabloko.

In 1996 Kovalev resigned from Yeltsin’s Hu-

man Rights Commission, in protest against his in-

creasing authoritarianism and the war crimes

committed by the military in Chechnya. He con-

tinues to be active in a variety of forums, and is

widely seen in the early twenty-first century as the

leading champion of human rights in Russia.

See also: DISSADENT MOVEMENT; MEMORIAL; SAKHAROV,

ANDREI DMITRIEVICH; SAMIZDAT

ETER

EDDAWAY

KOVALEVSKAYA, SOFIA VASILIEVNA

(1850–1891), mathematician and writer.

Sofia Korvin-Krukovskaya, growing up on an

estate in Vitebsk province, displayed unusual

mathematical ability from childhood. Desperate to

escape the strictures of gentry womanhood, at

eighteen she contracted a “fictive” marriage with

the paleontologist and social activist Vladimir Ko-

valevsky, who took her to western Europe to study.

In 1874 Kovalevskaya, mentored by the eminent

German mathematician Karl Weierstrass, received

a doctorate from Göttingen University. Afterward,

the Kovalevskys, now married in fact, returned to

St. Petersburg, where their daughter was born in

1878. In 1883 Kovalevsky, embroiled in financial

scandal connected with an oil company scheme,

committed suicide. Unable to find suitable teaching

work in Russia, Kovalevskaya, at the urging of

Weierstrass and the Swedish mathematician Gus-

tav Mittag-Leffler, accepted a professorship in the

newly established Stockholm University, becoming

the first woman in modern Europe to hold such a

post. In Sweden the homesick Kovalevskaya wrote

her vivid reminiscences of girlhood; a novella based

on a true incident, The Nihilist Girl; two plays writ-

ten in Swedish with writer Anna Charlotte Leffler

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under the title Struggle for Happiness, concerning the

contrast between real and ideal fates in life; and

some journalistic articles. In 1888 Kovalevskaya

received the prestigious French Prix Bordin for

mathematics in blind competition. Death from

pneumonia in 1891 cut short Kovalevskaya’s dual

careers as mature scientist and budding author. In

the early twentieth century her story served as in-

spiration for science-minded girls throughout Eu-

rope. Her mathematics—in particular, equations

describing the motions of rotating solids over time

(“Kovalevsky’s top”)—has particular relevance in

the space age.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Koblitz, Ann Hibner. (1993). A Convergence of Lives: Sofia

Kovalevskaia, Scientist, Writer, Revolutionary. New

Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Kovalevskaya, Sonya. (1979). A Russian Childhood, tr.,

ed., and intro. Beatrice Stillman; with an analysis of

Kovalevskaya’s Mathematics by P. Y. Kochina. New

York: Springer-Verlag.

Kovalevskaya, Sonya. (2001). Nihilist Girl, tr. Natasha

Kolchevska with Mary Zirin. New York: Modern

Language Association of America.

ARY

IRIN

KOZLOV, FROL ROMANOVICH

(1908–1965), top Communist party leader during

the 1950s and early 1960s.

Frol Kozlov’s path to power was typical for party

leaders of his generation of Soviet. Born in a village

in Ryazan Province, Kozlov became a worker and as-

sistant foreman at a textile plant where he also served

as Communist Youth League secretary. After study-

ing at the Leningrad Polytechnical Institute and

working as an engineer, he rose through the ranks:

secretary of the Izhevsk city party committee

(1940–1941), second secretary of Kuibyshev

Province (1947–1949), a party leader of Leningrad

(1949–1957), candidate member of the Central Com-

mittee’s Presidium (1957), and a Central Committee

secretary in 1960.

Presidium colleague Alexander Shelepin later

described Kozlov as a “very limited man.” Anastas

Mikoyan labeled him an “unintelligent, pro-Stalinist

reactionary and careerist.” Yet Kozlov backed

Khrushchev in his battle with the Antiparty Group

in 1957, and according to Khrushchev, he seemed

knowledgeable about economic matters, and “firm,

not someone who can be easily swayed.”

By 1963, when Kozlov was de facto second sec-

retary of the Soviet Communist party, he seemed

to Western Kremlinologists to be leading conserv-

ative resistance to Khrushchev’s reforms. In all

probability, however, there was no organized op-

position, and in fact, Kozlov soon began to irritate

Khrushchev, for example, when he allowed the So-

viet Communist Party’s ritual May Day 1963

greetings to other Communist parties to imply an

unauthorized change of line on Yugoslavia. Shortly

after Khrushchev berated Kozlov for this mistake

(but not necessarily because of Khrushchev’s

tirade), Kozlov suffered a stroke, which removed

him from participation in the Presidium, although

he formally remained a member until Khrushchev’s

ouster in October 1964.

See also: KHRUSHCHEV, NIKITA SERGEYEVICH

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Khrushchev, Sergei. (1990). Khrushchev on Khrushchev, tr.

and ed. William Taubman. Boston: Little, Brown.

Tatu, Michel. (1969). Power in the Kremlin: From

Khrushchev to Kosygin, tr. Helen Katel. New York:

Viking Press.

ILLIAM

AUBMAN

KOZYREV, ANDREI VLADIMIROVICH

(b. 1951), Russian foreign minister.

Andrei Kozyrev served as post-Communist

Russia’s first foreign minister, from 1990 to 1996.

He was well known as an advocate of pro-West-

ern policies, but by the mid-1990s, as these views

fell out of favor, he was forced from office.

Kozyrev was born in Belgium in 1951, where

his father, a Soviet diplomat, was then serving. He

was educated at Moscow State Institute of Inter-

national Relations, and he joined the Soviet Min-

istry of Foreign Affairs, becoming head of the

Department of International Organizations in

1986. He is fluent in English, Spanish, and French.

In 1990, when Russia declared its sovereignty,

Kozyrev was named foreign minister, and he was

one of the leading advocates for reform in Boris

Yeltsin’s circle. After the collapse of the Soviet

Union, he helped spearhead Russia’s pro-Western

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