a Very brief
RUSSIAN HISTORY
for grown-ups who are interested but just have no time
(with parallel glimpses of world history)
Russia’s prehistory started on a green field, in backwoods; and the Russian people and nation emerged in a downright Godforsaken hole, in the basin of the Oka River and in the swamps around Novgorod. (In after years, the Russian flag was raised in the Hawaii Islands, in California, as well as on the Pamir Mountains, in Warsaw, and in the Turkish city of Kars;
but it was very, very much later).
also Finnish tribes (whom one of our poets called “Nature’s sad stepsons”)
and Turkic tribes (Kumans/Tatars), whom another Russian poet described as “cheekbony Tatar snouts.”
In the beginning, Rus (ancient pre-Russia), with its capital in Kiev on the Dnieper, was a land of woods, lakes and rivers, a fish land; its people worshipped wooden images, and later on, at the time of St. Olga, the authorities acquired Eastern (Orthodox) Christianity from the Byzantine Greeks, and writing from the ancient Bulgarians. Kievan Rus became a huge and loose project, like its contemporary Charlemagne’s empire or Late Tang empire in China. (Only that the Carolingian empire had a population of 10 million, the Tang China, 50 million, and Rus of the first Rurikids, a mere five or six million).
Our Old Russian ancestors, the legendary Rurik and his successor Oleg the Seer, having pulled together a state with the aid of Scandinavian vagabonds, entered into more active relations with neighbors. They went on long-distance plundering raids southward (to Byzantium) and eastward (to Khazaria).
Collecting tribute in “their own” land also resembled plundering raids; in one of these, the Drevlians who lived northwest of Kiev murdered Grand Prince Igor, Rurik’s son.
The Pechenegs killed Svyatoslav, son of Igor and St. Olga and a great romantic, on his way back from Byzantium.
But these are details; the main thing was the expansion, proliferation of the Old Russian people to the northeast, to endless forests extremely scarcely populated by Nature’s sad stepsons; this is how first Rostov and Suzdal came into being, and then Vladimir on Kliazma and Yaroslavl on Volga (in the reigns of St. Vladimir and his son Yaroslav the Wise, respectively).
in Western Europe. Daughters of Grand Prince Yaroslav the Wise were married
to kings of Norway, Hungary, and France. He himself married Ingegerd of Sweden; his grandson Vladimir Monomach, Gytha of Wessex (that is, an English girl).
the Great, king of Denmark.
The Pechenegs, finally beaten by Yaroslav and forced off by the Kumans, moved somewhere to the Balkans;
so, the Kumans became the troublesome southern neighbors.
The Kumans were sort of pre-Tatars (although they did not intrude so deep and for such a long time).
…I don’t name any dates… sorry!
I remember them but don’t think
they are important.
as Tver, Pereslavl, Moscow, Kolomna. Stone churches and cathedrals were built in them; it was mostly Greeks who did the church services. It may be supposed that paganism remained the essential religion of the Old Russian people.
Other years: Just as in ancient Rus the ruling class consisted of Scandinavians (ancient Swedes) for some time, the Mongols were initially the ruling class in the gigantic empire of Genghis Khan and his sons and grandsons. In the early 13th century, the Mongols seized Northern China and Central Asia; one of their corps went through the Caucasus as far as Southern Rus, and routed the Old Russians and the Kumans in the battle of the Kalka (near Mariupol); however, they promptly returned to their land.
…In the 4th Crusade, the Western knights captured Constantinople instead of Jerusalem, and founded the Latin Empire in place
of Byzantium; it lasted for a half a century, until Michael Palaiologos restored Byzantium.
in all directions: into China, India, Iran, and westward. In the westward march under Batu Khan, almost all of Rus was devastated (except for Novgorod, Pskov, and today’s Belarus), with most of the population exterminated. The land was included in the Golden Horde realm
(its first Khan or “Tsar” was Batu, who probably was baptized in Orthodox faith), was laid under tribute, and the authority responsible for collecting tribute, i.e.
the Grand Prince, was appointed
by the Tatars.
the Tatar invasion and subordinance
to the Horde was much important.
But he misses the geopolitical point:
the country became so weak that it could not hold out against the small Lithuania (which seized today’s Belarus and Ukraine little by little) and could barely resist the small Teutonic Order and weak Sweden. The Lithuanians who took possession of Western Rus were savage people who needed civilizing.
And in the east, the second half of the 13th century was a sad and grim time. The Tatars invaded again and again, often by invitation of quarreling princely relatives. Little by little, three centers stood out in that bloody turmoil; they were Tver, Moscow, and Ryazan.
The first Prince of Moscow was Daniel, son of the renowned prince Alexander Nevsky.
Two years after the battle of Kulikovo, Khan Tokhtamysh plundered Moscow and burned it down; the Russians continued to pay tribute.
Meanwhile in Europe, the Hundred Years’ War went on; the Christians reconquered nearly all Spain from the Moors; Margaret the Dane united Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. In China, the Mongol dynasty of Yuan was ousted after 150 years of rule. Its founder was Khubilai (Kubla Khan of the psychedelic Coleridge), the first Yuan Emperor and Genghis Khan’s grandson. His brothers were
the Iranian ilkhan Hulagu and Möngke, Emperor of all the Mongols; Batu was his cousin. Some family!
Plague, the Black Death, struck all Europe, and Rus was not spared. In Asia, Timur made victorious and cruel campaigns in India, Persia, Turkey, and Golden Horde; en passant, he visited also the south of Rus, but did not linger there. His capital was Samarkand,
a city in today’s Uzbekistan. The climate grew colder. The Little Ice Age began, to last for nearly half a millennium.
67 years before. The Tatars from the recently established Khanate of Kazan invaded into the bargain.
he blinded one of the cousins; was dethroned in favor of another cousin named Dmitry Shemyaka, and himself was blinded. He escaped from the prison and was restored on the throne; Shemyaka was defeated, fled to Novgorod, and was poisoned there.
The feud ended in the very middle on the 15th century. In his last years, Vassily the Blind reigned with his young heir Ivan,
the future Tsar Ivan the Great.
As mentioned before, there were three strong principalities in Eastern Rus (Moscow, Tver, and Ryazan), two republics (Novgorod
and Pskov), and several smaller domains; the Lithuanian border was quite close to Moscow, and the Prince of Muscovy paid tribute
to the khan (“tsar”) of the Golden Horde.
Ivan III Vassilievich) had to deal with
all these matters, and he dealt with them.
In the early years, the new Grand Prince was looking about, getting prepared, then started off with the rich, but not warlike Novgorod. The boyars ruling the republic, headed by Martha Boretskaya, made steps towards recognizing the Polish-Lithuanian king as their sovereign, rather than the Grand Prince of Muscovy.
a war. Novgorod was defeated, paid
a huge indemnity, ceded many lands, and recognized Ivan as its sovereign.
(A few years later, there was a revolt in Novgorod, another march was launched, and the republic ceased to exist, becoming a Muscovite province; Moscow seized a colossal territory, including Perm and Vyatka.
After the first Novgorod campaign,
Ivan laid his hands on a few small principalities (of Yaroslavl, of Rostov etc.) by various tricks, but without hostilities. Then the Prince of Ryazan died, and
his widow, Ivan’s sister, became
the actual ruler of that domain.
And then Ivan refused to pay tribute
to the Tatars.
a large army and reached the Ugra River (in today’s Kaluga Region), where
the Russian forces stood in his way.
The Khan reckoned on assistance from the King of Poland and malcontent brothers of Ivan, but the king did not march out, and the brothers’ claims were settled. After a long “standoff”
on the Ugra, the Khan retreated.
Now the turn of Tver came. The boyars of that principality, seeing the strength
of the Muscovite Tsar, were deserting
to Moscow to enter its service.
At last, Ivan marched to Tver. Its prince fled to Lithuania. Tver became a Muscovite province.
Ivan started a full-scale war with Lithuania (separated from Poland at that time) and the German Livonian Order on the Baltic Coast; the war lasted several years. Lithuania was defeated and surrendered some of its lands (in today’s Bryansk, Kaluga, Smolensk and other regions). When the peace was made,
the marriage of the Lithuanian king and Ivan’s daughter Elena was also arranged.
The Livonians fought back masterfully, but the Lithuanian army was routed
at the Vedrosh, and did not offer active resistance afterwards. Under
the armistice agreement, Lithuania ceded a vast territory, one third of its land, including Chernigov, Novgorod-Seversky, and Bryansk.
Ivan sent a detachment across the Urals, to Yugra. A tribute (yassak) in furs was imposed on the indigenous people.
(Centuries after, tremendous oil and gas deposits were discovered there).
Ivan issued a Code of Law (Sudebnik).
A crowned double eagle appeared on the seal of the realm.
At first, the son by the first wife Ivan the Young was considered as crown prince, and after his death, his son, the sovereign’s grandson Dmitry Ivanovich. In a few years, the situation changed.
to an absolute monarchy.
Among Ivan’s contemporaries were Louis XI of France and Henry VII of England, Cesar Borgia, Turkish sultans Selim the Terrible and Bayezid. Fernando of Aragon and Isabel of Castile united their countries into one, named Spain; the Moors were driven out of their last stronghold Granada. The same year, the Spaniards led by the Genoese Columbus discovered America.
(Meanwhile, the Portuguese Vasco da Gama discovered the sea route to India).
The High Renaissance epoch (Bramante, Leonardo, Michael Angelo, and later Raphael) began in European art.
he did about the same. The Crimean and Kazan Tatars turned into open enemies; they made forays, which were repulsed somehow. There was a war against Poland and Lithuania; the Russians were defeated at Orsha, but reconquered
a most important city of Smolensk, with the aid of Lithuanian nobleman Glinsky.
a succession, a reshuffling of actually ruling boyars, and primarily the quarreling houses of Glinsky and Shuisky, with executions and murders.
of the very influential but not princely house of Koshkin (later, to make the name sound “sweeter,” they were called Romanovs, by the name of Anastasia’s father Roman Zakharyin-Koshkin).
Of course, the tsar ruled not himself but with the aid of a circle of advisers (Metropolitan Makary, priest Sylvester, Adashev, Kurbsky) and the Boyar Duma. He was a monarch of limited powers in those years. His advisers, it is believed, ruled quite usefully, and
the mid-16th century may be called the golden age of ancient Rus. Among the noticeable events are the issue of a new Code of Law, institution of prikazy (ministries), foundation of the Print Yard, establishment of Streltsy infantry equipped with firearms,
and the conquest of Kazan and Astrakhan.
the Crimean Khanate, but he preferred
to attack a closer target – the actually defenseless German Livonian Order (today’s Estonia and Latvia). At first,
the war was successful.
…Tsar Ivan was able, literate, and no fool, but at the same time not quite normal mentally, embittered by humiliations in his childhood, and without any moral restraints.
who had prepared everything for
a brilliant reign; and when it was prepared, the tsar imagined he could do without them. (Probably he had heard
by chance about absolute monarchs
of Europe). All of a sudden, Tsarina Anastasia died.
Next came a most weird division of Russia into the Tsar’s “oprichnina” (special domain) and the boyars’ “zemschina” (general domain), with mass relocations of boyars from their fiefdoms to other places where they would have no support.
Next was a monstrous war march to Novgorod (in fact there was no riot), with plundering the city and its vicinities and sadistic murder by the oprichniks (Royal guards) of thousands of people of all classes. As reported by foreigners, the tsar seemed a downright madman at that time, without any exaggeration.
(As previously mentioned, Russia was
a wooden country, unlike Europe, and Russian cities burned more horribly than European ones).
The tsar had two sons by Anastasia;
he killed his eldest son in a fit of rage, and the younger Fyodor was half-witted. He got married several more times, but
it was only the last wife Mary Nagaya
by whom he had one more son named Dmitry.
At last, the 25-year Livonian war ended – in a defeat and devastation. Russia ceded to Sweden nearly all of its Baltic Sea coast. The next year, Ivan IV (“ivan the terrible”) died.
The very end of the reign of Ivan IV saw the excursion to West Siberia by Yermak with his Volga and Don Cossacks. These Cossacks were hired by the rich and powerful Stroganov family. Initially, Yermak defended the Stroganovs’ possessions against forays of local tribes, and then invaded the Tatar Siberian Khanate (today’s Tyumen Region) with about 1,000 troops. The first campaign was successful, Yermak reported this to the tsar, was encouraged, and set off for a second campaign, but was killed in it.
The survivor Cossacks returned to Russia. This is called “conquest of Siberia,” but in fact it was just the first attempt to subjugate
one of the Trans-Urals regions.
as sadist, tyrant, and poor ruler.
The historian Platonov believes that the Time of Troubles (when Russia all but perished) began in the reign of “ivan the terrible.” There is no “ivan the terrible”
on the 1000 Years of Russia Monument in Novgorod erected in the reign
of Alexander II.
He commanded to praise that tsar in all schoolbooks and fiction books, and to shoot an affected film about him. Bulgakov wrote a comic play portraying Tsar Ivan, and Gaidai afterwards made
a mainstream comedy movie.
Roughly the same as his older contemporary Henry VIII with his 6 wives.
Meanwhile in the West, the Reformation happened; the Spaniards and Portuguese conquered South and Central America.
In India, invaders from Central Asia founded the Great Mogul Empire, which was Moslem but tolerant. On its coast and at sea,
its rulers Babur, Akbar, and Aurangzeb had to settle with the Portuguese (Portugal was a great maritime power then).
The Turkish Ottoman Empire reached the apex of its powers, stretching from Hungary to Bagdad and from Libya to Crimea.
a regency council of five persons to
the half-witted new Tsar Fyodor, but very soon it became reduced to one person, and that was Boris Godunov, Fyodor’s brother-in-law. The infant prince Dmitry and his mother were deported to the town of Uglich. Godunov was a skillful politician, and ruled on behalf of Fyodor for 15 years more or less efficiently.
The most noticeable of that quiet period was the death of the child Dmitry in Uglich, probably an accidental suicide during a game of mumble peg, but it raised most serious suspicions and even higher distrust of the authorities: the childless Fyodor had no more heirs, so the Rurikid dynasty had to break.
Another noticeable event was the institution of patriarchate in Russia.
After the death of Fyodor, the Assembly of the Land elected Boris Godunov Tsar. This may be attributed to Boris’s agility and his quiet rule – but also to the fact that the Land did not care any more who to elect.
At the very beginning of the 17th century, a famine happened, which lasted three years. (It is explained by a volcanic eruption
in America). Half a million people died, and most of the survivors wished that everything went to hell.
the King included, pretended to believe him, and permitted him to raise volunteers for a march to Moscow.
Nobody wanted to defend his successor, the minor Fyodor, and the army went over to the Impostor. He solemnly paraded to Moscow and ascended the throne. Fyodor Godunov and his mother (daughter of the chief oprichnik Malyuta Skuratov) were murdered.
Filaret was returned from exile and created the Metropolitan of Rostov.
They had hardly told the whole country that, lo and behold, it had a new tsar again, before some rascal was riding to the southwestern borderland to declare there that Dmitry had escaped! Soon, crowds of Russians gathered “under the banner” of False Dmitry II, seen by no one so far. They were serfs and Cossacks led by Bolotnikov and Ileika Muromets (pretending to be some “royal prince Peter,”), gentry headed by Prokop Lyapunov, and Streltsy of Istoma Pashkov.
At the crucial moment, the troops of Lyapunov and Pashkov joined the Tsar against the serfs who were defeated, driven off to Tula, and surrendered after
a siege; many of them were executed, including Bolotnikov and Ileika.
But right at that time in Lithuania (Belarus), False Dmitry II was fabricated at last. His force of Polish-Lithuanian gentry (szlachta), Cossacks, and Russian rabblement of various classes routed the Tsar’s forces, approached Moscow, and set up camp in its suburb of Tushino.
It came to pass that Russia had two tsars and two governments; Marina Mniszech recognized False Dmitry II (Impostor)
as her spouse; Metropolitan Filaret (Fyodor Romanov) also appeared in the Tushino camp. Now and then during the standoff, princes, boyars, and other men of name defected from Tushino to the Kremlin and back; they were called “migrators.” The Poles headed
by Sapieha besieged the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius (fortified monastery), but were unable to take it.
At that moment, the Poles led by their king invaded. Their small army routed
the Russians at Klushino. Tsar Vassily was deposed and made a monk by force.
Patriarch Hermogenes from his Polish confinement called for ousting the Poles.
However the same year, Kuzma Minin created a Second Land Militia in Nizhny Novgorod; Prince Pozharsky, still recovering from wounds, became its commander. The militia slowly moved towards Moscow. Chieftain Zarutsky with the “tsarina” Marina Mniszech and her infant son, the “Little Pretender” (pretender for the throne) retreated from the capital. After a lengthy siege, the starved Poles surrendered.
he was impaled, the Little Pretender was hanged, and Marina died in jail.
A few years later, Filaret came back from prison; he was elected Patriarch and became the co-ruler of his young son.
The reign of Mikhail, his son Alexis Mikhailovich, his grandson Fyodor the Sickly, and then regency of his granddaughter Sophia – 70+ years – was a time of recovery from the Time of Troubles, of comprehension of its lessons, the time of preparing for something new.
the Muscovite Tsardom could seem to an onlooker “a land of fools,” a half-Asian khanate. The main symbol of the age Tsar Alexis was the best tsar of Ancient Rus (“he entrenched upon no one’s property, no one’s honor, no one’s life”), but he was not a very clever or very industrious man. He meant well, but hoped that good results may be somehow achieved by themselves, without extra effort.
to the Pacific; schism of the church;
13-years’ war with Poland and then with Sweden, recognition by East Ukraine
of the supreme power of the Tsar, reconquest of Smolensk and some other regions; acquisition of the city of Kiev.
Nikon required replacement of the two-finger sign of the cross with the three-finger one, singing “hallelujah” not twice but thrice, writing “Jesus” in five rather than four Cyrillic letters, and other trifles. Avvakum objected, “It was not us who laid this down;
let it remain in its place forever and ever.” Finally, the archpriest and some of his followers were burnt alive, and the old rites were prohibited. (Patriarch Nikon was soon dismissed, for he desired to be as powerful as the tsar). It must be admitted that the reform’s enemies had more nativism than education; it was Greeks and Ukrainians / Belarusians who were the learned people in Russian Orthodoxy. The schism between the “Nikonians” and “Old Believers” still exists, although it is never mentioned.
in extreme cases, forced by complete exhaustion of victuals, they could feed
on human flesh.
The government had neither desire nor ability to borrow sciences, education, or arts from the West; it was limited to inviting European military men who instructed Russian soldiers and commanded them. Such officers, as well as merchants, medical doctors, engineers etc. lived in the so-called German Suburb at Moscow’s outskirt. This unique locality had several churches of Protestant confessions.
Sophia, an able and forceful woman, ruled for seven years quite acceptably for those times, although without due regard to the dynamic development of Europe.
in view of the tremendous progress
in the West impended a new time
of troubles and ruin of the land.
Moscow joined the coalition of several Western countries to fight the Turks.
a coup: Tsar Peter, of legal age by that time, fled to the impregnable Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius. By his order, Streltsy and foreign officers, boyars and officials started to leave Moscow to join him. Sophia’s followers were seized. She was removed from power and sent away
to Moscow’s Novodevichy Convent (without taking the veil).
Meanwhile, the France of Richelieu and Louis XIV was predominating in Europe; the Thirty Years’ War was ended at last; it heavily injured the German nation, and the wars of the Sun King brought it new sufferings. Holland was the richest and most advanced country, but England after the revolution of the mid-century challenged its first place. Spain was declining, Italy was in deep stagnation. The decline of the Turkish Empire was beginning. China was captured by the Manchurians (a northern tribe); its agile emperor Kangxi founded the Qing dynasty, China’s last dynasty. In America, the Dutch bought Manhattan Island for 60 guilders and founded New Amsterdam there (which is now New York). A place-name not strange to us Russians!
Remember how our great poet put it?
It’s bitter.
Well! Mayhap Ms Mitchell
(Was it Claude?)
Will remember me
In New York City,
Reading a translation
Of this ode.
the only outlet to the sea in the Russia
of those days), and military art with “toy companies,” which soon grew into Preobrazhensky and Semenovsky Regiments of Guards. He spent much time in the German Quarter, primarily in the home of his buddy Lefort and of his favorite Anna Mons. He got there a first vague concept of Europe.
to Prince Romodanovsky, “a monster by his appearance; fierce tyrant by his temper; a greatest ill-wisher to everybody; drunk every day and night;
but loyal to His Majesty like no one else.”
The historian Platonov notes the “biting cynicism” of the “assembly.” The Prince-Caesar (emperor) in it was the chief security officer Romodanovsky,
and the Prince-Pope, Peter’s first teacher Nikita Zotov.
However, time went by and Peter proceeded to his first feat, taking the Turkish fortress Azov at the mouth of the Don.
(The war with Turkey had not stopped since Golitsyn’s marches, but was dull). The first siege had no success; Peter ordered to build ships in Voronezh on Don to cut the fortress off the sea. Next year, Azov was captured.
for that time, the Grand Embassy.
It had diplomatic, educational, and commercial purposes. The tsar traveled incognito, under the name of Peter Mikhailov, and the embassy was headed by Lefort and Golovin. The governance
of Russia was delegated to the above boyars.
the diploma of bombardier), Northern Germany (where he met German princesses, a mother and daughter, who came to the conclusion that Peter was
a “very good and at once a very bad man,”) and finally reached Holland.
From Holland where they built mostly by eye, Peter moved to England where the science of “naval architecture” had already originated, and continued his practice there. In both countries, the most advanced ones for that time, Peter was interested in everything, from medicine to coinage (it was Newton who managed the Royal Mint in those days), from journalism to construction, from turnery to parliamentary system and religion. He hired technicians and purchased weapons.
He also watched the diplomatic talks, counting on support by both countries in the Turkish war, but they were not interested: the gigantic “Spanish Succession” war against Louis XIV’s France was anticipated.
The latter was a bloody act, but did not differ much in its scale from crackdowns in Europe of that time (the Monmouth rebellion, the Camisard revolt). The whole nation was expired with great fear.
a new port near Azov, on a Russian ship to Constantinople. When a peace treaty was signed with the Turks, Russia entered the Great Northern War.
The siege went on by halves, the Russian army consisted mainly of new recruits and poorly trained. Charles with a small force rapidly approached Narva and routed the outnumbering Russians, after which he turned upon Augustus.
By titanic effort, Peter began rebuilding the army.
The turn of Ingria came; the Russians took the fortress Nöteborg (currently Schlüsselburg) at the head of the Neva after a bloody storm, and then dropped down the river. The Tsar founded a fortification, future St. Petersburg, on Hare Island at the mouth
of the Neva. At the same time, the first naval battle between the Russians and Swedes was held, with Peter and Menshikov
personally present; two small ships were taken.
After a brief siege, Peter took Yuriev (Dorpat, Tartu), and then Narva. Charles conquered Poland (insecurely), captured Saxony, spent a long time there, and then moved eastward with a rested, complemented, strong army.
Having outplayed the Russians in several maneuvers, and defeating them in a few minor battles, Charles decided to march on Moscow. But he was short of food supplies, ammunition – and soldiers.
He ordered Gen. Lewenhaupt that the aforementioned be mustered/procured in the south Baltics and delivered to him in Belorussia.
Lеwenhaupt was intercepted by Peter and Menshikov with a flying corps (cavalry regiments and mounted Guards). In a bloody battle of Lesnaya the Swedes were defeated; Lewenhaupt brought to Charles just a half of his detachment, having lost the entire mammoth wagon-train. At the same time, the Swedish attack from Finland in order to snatch Petersburg was repelled; the Swedes suffered huge losses and were evacuated by ships.
About the same time, the Ukrainian Hetman Mazeppa betrayed Peter; he came galloping up to the Swedish camp and promised Charles cozy winter quarters with vast supplies in his capital Baturin. But Menshikov detailed by Peter seized Baturin and destroyed
it completely, so that nothing alive remained there. The Ukrainians en masse did not support Mazeppa.
a terribly cold winter.
The Russians maneuvered, avoiding a general battle until the time was right.
With onset of spring, the Swedes, shabby and exhausted with cold and undernourishment, approached Poltava in the east of Ukraine. It was a recently fortified town, with a decent garrison and active commandant. Charles wanted, upon capturing the town, to wait for the Crimean Khan there, expecting assistance from him. (But the Turkish Sultan forbade the Tatars to attack, wary of the Russian fleet ready in the Sea of Azov).
The King ordered an attack, but because of his wound he delegated commanded to the senior general, an experienced man but lacking Charles’ reputation
of an invincible leader. The battle did not last long; the Swedes were routed and fled with great losses. Two days later, Menshikov with cavalry and field guns ran them down on the Dnieper riverside; only Charles, Mazeppa, and a few hundreds of Swedes and Cossacks crossed the Dnieper and escaped to Turkish Moldavia.
The victory at Poltava meant a turning point in the Northern War; the Swedes were no more able to muster a large army any more; Denmark and King Augustus re-entered the war. Next year, the Russians captured Riga, Reval (Tallinn) and Vyborg.
to Peter’s erroneous strategy: underestimating the enemy, he decided to attack the Turkish Empire as liberator of Balkan nations. However, the “liberated” ones failed him, providing no necessary support. Immense numbers of Turks pinned down the Russian army at the Pruth River (Moldavia).
The Russians occupied all of Finland, fought the remnants of the Swedes in Germany. The war was delayed again due to misunderstandings with the allies.
At last, after three successful assault landings of Russian troops in Sweden proper, the Treaty of Nystad was signed. Russia received today’s Leningrad Oblast, Estonia, and most of Latvia with a most important port of Riga.
The war lasted 21 years, bringing the Russian people a lot of pain and hardships – and the title of a great power.
The recently instituted Senate declared Peter Emperor, Great, and Father of his Country.
to Europe (his visit to Germany, Holland, and France, which had no special results). The “Prince Alexis affair” was more important. Peter the Great’s son and heir did not show sympathy to his father’s reforms, and secretly was straight hostile to them. He did not arrange plots, did not call for anything, but it was clear that after Peter’s death Alexis would not continue the reforms and even cancel them totally.
A court of temporal and ecclesiastical personae sentenced Alexis to death
for treason. The Tsar did not sign the sentence, but Alexis died the next day
by unknown cause and was buried in
the Peter and Paul Cathedral.
Dozens of his followers were executed
or otherwise punished.
Just on year after the peace with Sweden, the Tsar proceeded to a new project, the Persian war.
on the south shore of the Caspian.
(By the way, the Baku oil was already known and interested Peter).
Meanwhile, the War of the Spanish Succession ended in Europe; Louis XIV, the Sun King, died. The war terribly devastated France,
it lost the first place; the English supremacy emerged, related to no person in particular, and created by the effort of the entire English people – seafarers, soldiers, engineers, scientists, merchants and businessmen, journalists. The English parliamentary system developed, existing up to this day. In North America, the French founded New Orleans and Detroit; the Pacific shore of North America remained unknown to Europeans. The Mogul Empire in India began to disintegrate.
the country. She reigned two years without any special events; after her death, the 12-year-old Peter Alexeevich became emperor as Peter II.
The royal court moved to Moscow.
There were no important events, either. The young tsar died from pox; he reigned less than three years.
Under her, many Germans arrived from the Baltics to Russia for lucrative jobs, and first of all her favorite Biron.
The “German domination” began. Osterman ruled the politics, and Field Marshals Münnich and Lacy ruled the army.
Common people’s life was hard; they had to pay excessive taxes, and the revenues were used to cover the court’s expenses or embezzled. The reign of Anna Ivanovna is known for cruel executions and tortures of suspected aristocrats (Dolgorukys, Golitsyns, Volynskoy) and their followers, awkward luxury of the court (“the ice house”) and for the Turkish war – with military success
(the Russians marched up and down Crimea twice, and gained victories in Moldavia), huge losses, and miserable diplomatic results (Russia regained Azov, but without its fortifications).
the first Homosapiens moved from Asia to America 10,000 years ago).
Anna Ivanovna died after a 10-year reign, having bequeathed the throne to
her grand-nephew, two-month-old Ivan Antonovich, under the regency of her favorite Duke Biron. Soon the Duke was arrested, and regency passed to Ivan’s mother Anna Leopoldovna.
of Elisabeth Petrovna, natural daughter of Peter the Great. The family of Ivan Antonovich was exiled, and he was doomed to solitary incarceration from
his infant years.
All her retinue (Shuvalovs, Vorontsovs, Bestuzhev) were ethnic Russians, although there still were many Germans in high offices.
Monuments of her reign were the University of Moscow (Russia’s first), Academy of Fine Arts, Winter Palace and Catherine Palace; professional Russian theater appeared in her time. Scientist and author Lomonosov and his comrade Vinogradov are clearly Elisabethan phenomena.
a war of stupidity, the Swedes had no chances, they were beaten and yielded up a large swath north of Vyborg.
After thirteen years of peaceful unhurried development (limited by serfdom and semi-feudal governance), a new and large Seven Years’ War began against Prussia of Frederick II in alliance with Austria and France.
The warfare was waged in the territory
of today’s Poland and eastern Germany, in an unhurried and grand manner.
The losses were considerable. But the victories were considerable too. Berlin was captured by the Russians – just for three days; East Prussia with Königsberg became a Russian province and swore an oath to the Tsarina, philosopher Kant among others.
When still the crown prince, Peter III seemed infantile and mindless; having ascended the throne, he proved to be a bad ruler completely alien to Russia. He immediately stopped the war with Frederick (whose admirer he was), discarding all conquests,
and contemplated a war against Denmark for interests of his homeland Holstein absolutely alien to Russia.
did not help.
of all. It was the Guards headed by the brothers Orlov that accomplished a coup in favor of Catherine just after a half-year of the reign of Peter III. The deposed emperor was taken to a country house
in Ropsha and murdered in a few days
in obscure circumstances.
(Two years after, in an attempt to get free, Ivan Antonovich who had spent all his short life in jail was murdered).
to choose the right and able persons. Besides, Catherine generously endowed her confidants with money and villages, and turned a blind eye to their financial improprieties. “Let’s make it all shake!”, the tsarina used to say.
The status of serfs may be compared, not without reason, to the status of Black slaves in the plantations of North America or Brazil. They were bought
and sold as a commodity, sometimes separating parents and children, husbands and wives.
The nobility was granted optional service, but noblemen, mostly modest or simply poor due to split-up inheritances, willingly entered Tsar’s service;
One of the first deeds of Catherine II was convening a Legislative Commission of noblemen, citizens, Cossacks, free peasants, and non-Christians (Tatars, Bashkirs etc.) of all Russia to improve the laws and regulations (codes). At the Commission’s sessions, one might speak out grievances, proposals, and opinions in general. There had not been such broad-range nation-wide congresses since the days of Tsar Alexis. It’s a different matter that there was not much use from all those debates (in the conditions of an autocratic, slave-holding, bureaucratic, and semi-feudal monarchy). And then the 1st Turkish War began, on the excuse of which the Commission was shut down.
The first two years, the warfare was unhurried; the Russian victories thundered in the third year. On land, Peter Rumyantsov (probably son of Peter the Great) routed, with modest forces,
an immeasurable Turkish/Tatar army
(at Larga and Kagul).
of Belorussia.
The Turkish war had not finished when a civil war began in the Volga Land and in the Urals. It was the Pugachev rebellion.
The main combat power of the rebels was in Cossacks who lived on the Yaik River (east of the Volga), but they were multiply outnumbered by восставшие serfs and Ural workers, and indigenous communities (Bashkirs etc.) The rebellion’s leader Yaik Cossack Pugachev declared himself Emperor Peter Fyodorovich who escaped from Catherine.
Pugachev’s rabble even managed to take Kazan, a city on a par with Moscow and Petersburg in terms of population. But after Kazan, the Tsarist forces (led by Peter Panin and Michelsohnen, involving Suvorov) inflicted them defeat after defeat, and drove their remnants to Caspian steppe, where Pugachev was finally caught. He was executed in Moscow. The uprising put a great scare
in the authorities, but no one dared even to think about abolition of serfdom.
After 13 years of peace, two wars broke out simultaneously, 2nd Turkish and Swedish. The eccentric Swedish king begged and borrowed money here and there to build a decent navy; but the Russian Baltic Fleet led by Samuel Greig and Chichagov proved
to be stronger in general. A peace was reached without changing the borders.
at Rymnik, Măcin, and Cape Kaliakra.
The Turkish capital was threatened.
The treaty of Jassy defined Russia’s full supremacy in the Black Sea.
The most important event of Catherine’s last years was the second partition of Poland followed by a Polish war and the third partition, after which Poland ceased to exist; Russia gained western Latvia, Lithuania, western Belorussia and almost all western Ukraine.
Other important events were the establishment of Russian-American Company for the development of Alaska and the “Persian campaign,” with some military success but excessive for a tired country and abandoned in the next reign.
The Hermitage was founded, and the “Copper Horseman” was erected.
Eastern Europe and Denmark saw a “second edition of serfdom.” England accomplished an industrial revolution, eliminating the peasantry as class (Jethro Tull indirectly helped this with his seed drill and horse-hoeing husbandry). England gained actual control of the whole Hindustan with its untold riches.
Order restored in the first year of his reign was replaced by even greater disorder. A major episode of the reign was Suvorov’s Italian campaign and Swiss march.
At the request of the allied Austria, he went with his army to Switzerland, but due to incoherence and to resolute actions of the French Gen. Masséna who routed separately the Russians and Austrians already staying in Switzerland, the army faced an outnumbering enemy.
Suvorov who felt ill after the march
died very soon.
Alexander did not pay much attention to the navy, but it was in his reign that Krusenstern and Lissyansky became the first Russians to sail around the world, and Bellingshausen and Lazarev discovered Antarctica and sailed around it.
a republican deep inside – just like his grandmother Catherine) had high-minded, liberal conversations with his inner circle, and the public knew it; this was mainly the essence of the reforms of his first years.
The Russian army sent to Austria joined the Austrians – and was defeated
at Austerlitz.
Liberal Speransky was the main actor
for civilian affairs.
of intention to abolish serfdom.
Besides, economic interests were affected.
Right before Napoleon’s invasion the Tsar, acceding to public demand, discharged and exiled Speransky.
(It ended right at the moment of Napoleon's invasion of Russia).
Russia gained Moldavia and Sukhumi
on the Black Sea.
no rejoicing in public in that regard.
And now, the “critical moment” came: Napoleon invaded Russia at the head of a giant army (another and smaller part of his troops fought the English and Spaniards in the Iberian Peninsula). That army had many soldiers from countries in Napoleon’s control: Poles, Germans, Italians, Dutch. Austria was Napoleon’s ally; it did not fight actively, but it did divert some of the Russian forces.
Napoleon with most of his forces stayed in Moscow abandoned by its residents for a little over a month. Meanwhile, Kutuzov in a maneuver from the east to the southwest of Moscow region reached the village of Tarutino and set up camp there.
to make peace, a guerilla war was spreading menacing French communications and supply, two-thirds of Moscow burned down in the famous fire, tribes of different ethnicities demoralized in Moscow, and going on Petersburg before winter meant a risk.
It seemed that in terms of logistics it was better to go the Kaluga road (south-westward), but it was blocked by the Russian army. After three days of fighting at Maloyaroslavets, Napoleon had to retreat via the old Smolensk road. At first the weather was warm, then a cold spell began, for which the French were not prepared. From Moscow to the Berezina River, their army diminished twofold.
Very soon real frost broke out, and just pitiful remnants of those who entered Russia that summer were able to leave it.
Russia was saved miraculously. Remember how our great poet put it?
When we were bowed beneath the rod
In 1812? The folk’s resistance,
The winter, Barclay, Russia’s God?
All next year the Russians marched to the borders of France, fighting. Kutuzov died in Germany; Wittgenstein appointed in his place acted poorly and was soon replaced by Barclay.
Finally, the Russians, Austrians, and Prussians reached Paris; among the allies, Tsar Alexander had the greatest authority.
The State for long; the course of things
Soon brought us, if you please, to Paris,
Where Russia’s czar was king of kings.
on their own free will.
Broad privileges were also granted to Finland.
It was romantic appeal. The image of the commander Yermolov who wanted to be, and knew how to be popular, became romantic too. Now the life, after the resounding victories, was really stagnant. The peasantry showed patriotism in the Patriotic War, but it was never rewarded (“let peasants, our good people, be rewarded by God.”)
This was how Russia lived, in a perfunctory manner for ten years, until the sudden death of Alexander the First (“Alexander the Blessed”) in one of his travels (in Taganrog).
The Tsar left a will in favor of another brother, Nicholas, but the will was kept
so confidential that virtually no one knew about it. Upon hearing news of the tsar’s death, portraits of Constantine as successor were hung out in some shops.
in the country intending to establish
a constitutional monarchy (or even republic; murder of royal family was also proposed), abolish serfdom (with or without apportioning land to peasants), and generally establish “freedom.”
to be severe.”).
Taking advantage of the confusion, members of the society marched out with several Guards units to Senate Square of Petersburg – on the day of the oath to the new emperor Nicholas, December 14 (which is why they were called Decembrists). Gen. Miloradovich,
a hero of the Patriotic War, tried to dissuade the rebels and was murdered. The rebellion was suppressed with the aid of cannon,
the tsarist forces were commanded by Vassilchikov, Benckendorff, and Toll.
Hundreds of rank and file soldiers, often beguiled in the action, were sentenced to cruel corporal punishment (thousands of rod lashes). The noblemen got various terms of penal servitude and exile;
five of them were hanged.
the command of Paskevich, who became who became the main soldier of Nicholas’s era. But right after, a new one burst out, against the Turks, fought by Paskevich again in the Caucasus, and Diebitsch in the Balkans. As soon as
the Russians won, a third war began, this time with a rebellious Poland.
the “eight voivodeships,” i.e. Lithuania, Belorussia, and Western Ukraine, to Poland was set forth. The insurrection was finished off in nine months – again under the command of Paskevich.
Peaceful life went on generally as before. Cancrin was putting finance right, Speransky was building a monumental code of laws; Kisselyov dealt with the peasant issue, improving the life of state-owned (governmental) peasants, but without touching serfdom. Vorontsov governed all the Black Sea, and afterwards all the Caucasus. Chief of gendarmes Benckendorff was in charge of state security, and Kleinmichel, of roads and bridges.
an opera, then another. The Alexander Column by Montferrand appeared on Palace Square in St. Petersburg, and it was also Montferrand who finished the construction of the grandiose St. Isaac’s Cathedral. The authorities were not too severe on publications. Steamboats navigated the Baltic and the Volga (but the navy remained sailing); a railroad was built between Petersburg and Tsarskoye Selo (and in Europe and the United States there already were many thousand miles of railroads).
And just 4 years later came another critical moment in Russian history. The Tsar who grew rather stupid due to many years of good luck, got into a war with Turkey. Turkey was weak, but Europe – England, and France, and Prussia, and Austria saved by Nicholas – hated any reinforcement of Russia at its expense. And when the Russian navy smashed the Turks at Sinope, and the Russian army appeared at the Danube, they started preparing for war.
to arrive in Varna, Bulgaria. Their destination could be the Caucasus or Odessa, but eventually it was Crimea.
The army of the allies (French, British, and Turks) landed in Crimean Eupatoria unimpeded, started towards Sevastopol, and on its way defeated the Russian army on the Alma river.
a naval battle against the powerful allied navy (great numerical superiority, steam battleships, long-range guns), but rather to sink seven ships in the harbor of Sevastopol. The siege of Sevastopol began.
The valiant defense of the city was headed by Admirals Kornilov (killed), then Nakhimov (killed); engineer Totleben was the fortification genius. Prince Menshikov was in command of all the forces in Crimea. He and his subordinate generals and officers often showed mediocrity and hesitancy
The allies’ rifled-bore firearms (rifles) were better than Russian smooth-bore guns. This is why field battles were drawn or lost, and besieged Sevastopol could hardly stand, but still held out for almost a year.
This in fact meant an end to the war: the French emperor decided that enough had been done for the glory of his arms (the French were the main force of the allies), and the British were not able to continue alone. Russia lost a small area in Moldavia and the right to have a navy in the Black Sea.
Sevastopol was still holding on when Tsar Nicholas the First died in Petersburg. He was nicknamed “Nicholas the Birch Rod,”
and lived long enough to see humiliation, and even failure, of his policy and his regime.
The era of the Great Reforms began in Russia. As they say, push came to shove! And if not for the shameful outcome of the Crimean War (no, it was not a knockout or knockdown, just a flick on the nose), the public with the tsar at the head would never have taken care.
of N. Nekrassov.
The core reform was the peasant one (Rostovtsev-N. Milyutin reform). The Tsar publicly declared that the “condition of owning souls” could not persist, and established a Secret Committee for the Peasant Issue. Its proceedings resulted four years later in the Tsar’s Manifesto and extremely long Regulations Concerning Peasants Leaving Serf Dependence.
of capitalism, the factories and mills needed workers, and many peasants, now emancipated citizens, went there.
All the army was armed with rifles,
the American Berdan’s rifle (“Berdanka”) modified in Russia being the core model. The artillery was completely renovated, and its complement doubled.
In other words, the key role in city administrations was now played not by Tsar’s officials but by delegates from well-to-do citizens.
The Caucasian war lasted without stop for 40 years, and it had to be ended.
The eviction still lasted when a next Polish insurrection broke out.
The first coal mines and first iron works appeared in Donbass; here, Welsh John Hughes (Yuz) was the pioneer; the city of Yuzovka (Donetsk) was named after him.
It was the time of impressive flourishing of Russian literature and other arts.
The preeminent satirist was Saltykov (Schedrin).
by Montferrand-Klodt.
Closer to the end of the 2nd Opium War, when the defeat of the Chinese became evident, Russian governor Muravyov-Amursky forced China to sign the Treaty of Aigun establishing the current Russian-Chinese border on the Amur. The terms of the treaty giving Russia an immense and very valuable territory without shots were soon secured in Peking by diplomat Ignatiev.
of large Central Asian countries, Bokhara Emirate and Khiva and Kokand Khanates (today’s southern Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kirgizia, and Tajikistan).
While taking the Far East and Central Asia, we gave away Alaska with the Aleutian Islands, selling them to the USA for 7 million dollars.
Earlier, Russia left California (Fort Ross) and Hawaii (Kauai).
The Turkish Empire, much weakened by that time, still tried to hold out in the Balkan Peninsula. Its army was well armed with British and American weapons, and its navy dominated the Black Sea (the Russians had almost no navy). The hostilities were in the Balkans (in Bulgaria) and in the Caucasus.
the Turks gave it up, and their main detachments surrendered.
Europe greatly disliked such a treaty strengthening Russia and the Slavs friendly to it. The Berlin Congress agreed on borders less favorable for Russia and the Slavs. Along the way, Austria snatched Bosnia from the Turks, and England snatched Cyprus
(for protection against anticipated claims of the Russians). In the Caucasus, Kars and Batum became Russian cities.
In concluding this section (and epoch), we will touch upon the unpleasant subject of revolutionary activity and terrorism.
of a small circle of bums like himself.
He shot at the Tsar near the Summer Park gate, his elbow was jostled by a workman standing in the crowd;
he was tried and hanged.
The era of the Great Reforms came to its end. Alexander the Second entered history as the Tsar Liberator (of Russian peasants and Balkan Slavs).
These days there is the church
of the Savior on the Blood at the place
of his death.
The next emperor was Alexander III the “Peacemaker” – there was no war in his 13-year reign, a case never heard of in Russia.
In the era of Alexander III, era of reaction and counter-reforms, less liberalism was permitted in the press and society, but industry and commerce developed at even higher rates. The construction
of the Trans-Siberian Railroad from
the Urals to Vladivostok started, and
a considerable part of it completed.
It was then that Witte, the minister of railways (the famous tea glass holder appeared in railway cars in his time) and finance, started his career as statesman. The chief mastermind of the reign, Count D. Tolstoy dealt with the interior, Katkov remained the most important conservative journalist.
A grim episode of those years was famine in European Russia coming with epidemics (cholera, typhoid fever). Famine relief aid was provided by thousands and thousands of rich Russians (the most known is the input of Leo Tolstoy and his family).
Humanitarian aid was also received from America. …It was the last mass famine in the tsarist time.
The president of the French Republic arrived in Kronstadt on board a battleship. The Emperor visited the ship and listened to the Marseillaise anthem with his head uncovered. This is how the Franco-Russian alliance, future “Entente” (concord), began, strategically aimed against the strengthening Germany and its ally Austria.
Alexander the Third died in Crimea’s Livadia from a cardiac and kidney disease, died before 50, leaving to his heir a calm, developing, and thriving country, whose internal diseases were low-key at that point.
After the Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian war, Europe’s strongest state, the German Empire, was established, whose creator is believed to be Prince Bismarck.
It contained the words “pointless daydreams” (about restraints on autocracy). All educated people in Russia did not like this at all.
Russia proposed to convene
a conference in Hague on disarmament and on laws and customs of war. Several countries supported the proposal, but at this and subsequent conferences next to nothing was done for disarmament as such. Armament for a future war was just what the German Kaiser Wilhelm wanted, and France, seeking revenge, was afraid of falling behind.
The construction of the Great Siberian Railroad was being completed; it was arranged with the Chinese government about its branch to Manchuria (northern China).
The rivalry of Russia and Japan in the Far East, which had lasted several years, at last turned to war, which the Russian government carelessly did not try to prevent.
After a long (nearly a year) stubborn defense, Port Arthur fell. Almost simultaneously, the First Russian Revolution started.
The demonstrators were told to stop and disperse; rifle salvos followed, and Cossacks’ attack with swords and horsewhips. Hundreds were killed, and thousands wounded.
Strikes began – in Riga and Warsaw, and of Ivanovo’s weavers. In Lodz, Poland, the strike passed into a revolt with numerous fatalities. The government announces its plans to convene an elective representative body (Duma), issued several liberal decrees,
but this did not calm the country at all. And when the crew of the battleship Potyomkin mutinied, fired at Odessa, and then took
the ship to Romania, it became clear that the kidding was over.
(a tragic and shameful episode), peace negotiations started. Count Witte succeeded in signing a more or less acceptable peace treaty, ceding half of Sakhalin Island (Japan was exhausted militarily and economically).A general strike started in Russia; railways in particular went on strike.
The Manifesto was followed by Jew pogroms in all European Russia (over 600) with thousands of fatalities and maimed victims; however, intellectuals of other origins were also beaten and murdered. This was how some of the populace showed their Russian patriotism and monarchic sentiment.
The acme of the revolution was the Moscow uprising organized by extremists – Essers and Bolsheviks. It lasted for over a week, and was suppressed with artillery and the Semenovsky Guards regiment. Little is known about the leaders of the uprising; probably it was essentially of a grassroots and horizontal nature; among the sponsors were the eccentric millionaire Savva Morozov and his cousin-in-law factory owner Schmitt.
the first, and was also dissolved.
the allotments to individual households (previously the land was communal);
in canceling redemption payments (which had already lasted for over 40 years); in removing legal restrictions for peasants; in resettling persons interested to Siberian lands with governmental aid; in selling crown lands to peasants.
At that time, Rasputin, a Siberian peasant introduced to the Tsarina and Tsar as spiritual mentor and miraculous elder secured
a footing at the court. His influence was attributed to the royal couple’s hopes that the elder would cure Alexis,
the infant (and only) heir to the throne, of hemophilia.
Evidently, he had a gift of hypnosis.
Rasputin advised not to meddle in the world war, but was not listened to.
While Germany and France were prepared for the war, Russia wasn’t, to a large extent. Medical forces and facilities, clothing, and artillery shells were lacking. The scale of the war was hard to foresee.
Nevertheless, Russia immediately went into battle with the Germans in East Prussia and Poland, and with the Austrians, in Galicia, noticeably relieving the pressure on France (the Germans were approaching Paris) and on Serbia.
In the Galician battles, Generals Brussilov and Ruzsky won glory for the first time. The commander-in-chief of all Russian forces was experienced and popular Grand Duke Nicholas, the Tsar’s uncle.
In the next year of the war, the Germans deployed most of their forces to Russia. The Russians had to retreat to their own territory, deep into Belorussia and towards Riga, and to surrender the conquered Galicia. “The great retreat” was a heavy blow for the army and the whole society. In the Caucasian theater, however, the Turks were beaten and defended in their own territory.
One year later, the Russians launched an offensive in the south-western theater of war (“Brussilov breakthrough”).
The Austrian army suffered heavy losses and continued to exist only thanks to German divisions redeployed from France – and inactivity of the Western and Northern fronts.
The public related ill success in the field to the names of the tsar, tsarina, and their spiritual mentor Rasputin; they said that there were German spies in the tsar’s retinue, that Rasputin lived in sin with the tsarina. Probably there were spies, but first of all there was certain desire for peace, if only separate peace – and not only at the court. The Allies, primarily Britain, greatly disliked it.
The Russian Tsardom, the Russian Empire came to their end, at least formally and in name.
The February Revolution brought democracy to Russia, and that in a broad and limitless way. The Provisional Government was established, where the Cadets (Milyukov) and other liberals had overwhelming majority; the only Socialist was lawyer Kerensky.
for officers, etc. But neither one power nor the other made steps towards what most of the people really desired, namely towards peace and land.
Meanwhile, slaughter on the front continued. The offensive started by the Russians failed, the losses were great.
Soldiers encouraged by the democratization of the armed forces beat up officers by hundred, and even murdered them.
The Bolsheviks led thousands of workers, soldiers, and seamen to an armed rally. Rifle and machine-gun firing followed on both sides; artillery was also used. The Provisional Government managed to prevent a coup.
Yes, the Bolsheviks were restrained a bit, but what next? The situation at the front grew worse and worse: the Germans took Riga, the army was falling to pieces. Various Soviets continued to meddle with everything, including warfare.
On the appointed day, Bolshevik troops started seizing the key points of the capital (bridges, telegraph, telephone).
Finally, a detachment headed by Antonov-Ovseenko, almost without firing a shot, occupied the Winter Palace and arrested the Provisional Government. Lenin announced at the All-Russian Congress of Soviets that the socialist revolution was accomplished.
The new authorities issued a Decree on Peace, a Decree on Land (nationalization of all gentry, monastery, and apanage landed estates without redemption), and formed a government – Council of People’s Commissars headed by Lenin (Trotsky became Commissar for Foreign Affairs). The government first consisted of Bolsheviks only, later left-wing Essers were added to them for some time. Awful bewilderment prevailed all across the country. In many places of the vast Russia, the Bolsheviks’ coming to power was accepted peacefully, paying no special attention; many hoped that the extremists would not hold out longer than for a week
or a month. But soon after, the nationalization (appropriation by the state) of all and everything, mayhem of deserter soldiery
and seamen, and first steps of the Cheka (secret police) began to cause more and more discontent. Officers and others dissatisfied with the new rule were fleeing south, to the Don river.
on the very first day of the Bolshevik (“October”) revolution; but in the first months, it went on rather mildly.
The most important issue was making
a peace with the “Central Powers.”
The Germans made appalling demands (surrender all Ukraine, Belorussia, Estonia, Crimea, and pay a huge contribution in money and in kind).
The tsarist army collapsed, so there were no arguments.
the offensive, virtually without rebuff.
The peace treaty of Brest had to be signed on their terms. The Soviet government moved to Moscow.
was the Germans’ ally; Kornilov’s Volunteer (White) Army was for
the Entente, but both armies were against the Bolsheviks. The White volunteers (they were very few) pushed by the Reds retired to Kuban (“the Ice March”) and continued their struggle there led by Denikin (Kornilov was killed in action).
Russia had a Czechoslovakian Corps of many thousands of Austrian prisoners of war controlled by the French; the Czechs were returning to Europe via the Siberian Railroad, and stretched from the Volga to Vladivostok. They were armed, and at some moment they confronted the Bolsheviks, who they thought were the Germans’ allies. They were joined by a small nascent White Army
in the Volga Land, Urals, and Siberia.
He widely recruited to the army tsarist officers and generals (Muravyov, Tukhachevsky, S. S. Kamenev, Gittis, Brusilov) controlled by Bolshevik commissars (Stalin, Ordjonikidze, Ivan Smirnov, Gamarnik, Gussev, Smilga).
in Ukraine occupied by the Germans. Foreign troops (Japanese etc.) landed
in the Far East, British and US troops
in the North, etc.
At the same time, Admiral Kolchak took power in Siberia and was declared “Supreme Ruler of Russia.”
He was supported by the Entente.
Eight months after the conclusion of the Brest Treaty, Germany and its allies were defeated in the war. The German and Austrian troops were leaving Ukraine, Belorussia, and the Baltics. The Reds advanced to replace them. The Reds also held on in some areas
of Central Asia. But the south of Russia was occupied by the Whites headed by (Armed Forces of the South of Russia).
French troops disembarked in Odessa; the Whites joined them. In the Baltics, the young republics of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia succeeded in driving the Reds out.
In the North Caucasus and in Trans-Caucasia, the confusion was beyond any imagination. That region saw such phenomena as “First Soviet Shariah Storm Column of Comrade Mironenko” and an anarchist “waterproof division.”
to Moscow and Gen. Yudenich’s march to Petrograd started simultaneously.
There were two major theaters of war left, the Crimean and the Polish one.
(The recently established Polish Republic supported by France confronted the Reds, its army seized Kiev and nearly
all Belorussia). A counteroffensive of the RKKA’s Western Front (Tukhachevsky, Kork) and South-Western Front (Yegorov, Budyonny) was successful, but the goals set, Warsaw and Lvov, were not achieved.
The Bolsheviks moved all their forces to the Wrangel theater of war. The Crimean isthmus (Perekop) was well fortified, but Frunze’s Red troops aided by the Insurgent Army of anarchist Makhno struck not only from Perekop but also from the east, across Sivash (the Rotten Sea).
to proclaim a New Economic Policy (NEP) instead of “military communism”
in a completely devastated, starved, and worn-out country.
The fortress was taken by a second assault with even higher losses of Soviet troops; many defenders of Kronstadt walked to Finland on ice.
Half a year later, the Soviet troops finally suppressed the peasant insurrection in Tambov region, and Bolshevik atrocities were no less than in Crimea.
5 years after the October Revolution.
The Civil War ended. Its victims were
8 million people, and millions emigrated. The Communists won, because this was what the majority of the Russian people wanted. The participation of foreigners (Czechs, Poles, Japanese, Frenchmen, and Englishmen on the White side; Chinese and Latvian units on the Red side) was not so important.
of Bolshevism in Russia was convincing also because the governments of all great powers were hostile to Soviet Russia, but during the intervention
of these powers it turned out that the majority of peoples of these powers felt differently at that moment.
Concluding this vast and thorny subject, a few lines from a hit song of the Civil War epoch:
So horror stricken,
He wants to live but it’s so hard.
He was detained,
He was disdained,
“Show us your papers and your card!”
…………………..
I’m not a Cadet man,
I’m not a Red man,
Outside all parties I remain.
I did no rallying,
Or other dallying,
And all I did was picking grain.
of the central committee of the All-Union Communist Party).
Lenin died. His position of chairman of government was given to Rykov. Stalin who previously had kept a low profile was moving
to the forefront in his position of the Party’s general secretary (in charge of appointments in each region and each town
of colossal Russia).
or kolkhozes, supervised by the Party (building a powerful comprehensive
and self-sufficient industry) and cultural revolution (universal literacy with total Party and governmental control over all press, cinema, theater etc.; nearly total suppression of religion).
Collectivization (defarming) was a tragedy not only for peasantry; it strikingly distorted, disfigured the whole face of Russia.
Millions of strong peasant families were sent to Siberia; they were accused of being “kulaks” (exploiters of others’ labor) or “kulak’s henchmen.” When other peasants were herded into kolkhozes, they slaughtered their cattle, unwilling to give it away to somebody.
a crop failure in 1930 and 1933, and terrible famine broke out. The Party, nevertheless, grabbed grain away for exports and for supply of cities, without providing relief aid. Millions of people died in Ukraine and the south of Russia.
Other millions of people rushed to cities, first of all to the construction sites of the Five-Year Plan (of industry development).
At that time a worldwide economic crisis raged, the greatest in history, so Western engineers were happy to go to Russia, and the manufacturers sold equipment and materials at moderate prices.
Meanwhile, Stalin instituted new amazing countries – the Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Uzbek, Tajik, and Turkmen soviet socialist republics (SSR), and outlined borders for them effective up to this day. He also established numerous autonomous republics, oblasts, and districts, including the Karelian ASSR (one time it was called Karelo-Finnish SSR, but later, as the anecdote goes, it was found that only two Finns lived there, Fin. Inspector and Finkelstein, and besides, they were one person).
of victors,” was convened, where quite officially Stalin’s dictatorship (deification, “cult of personality”) was proclaimed. Still, not everyone in the Party liked it; many remembered well the time when Koba was just one of dozens of Lenin’s co-workers, and not “The Leader” at all.
(as Petrograd was renamed).
The circumstances are not quite clear up to this day. Stalin used the assassination to unleash terror, which grew into a Great Purge in a couple of years. Kamenev, Zinoviev, and Trotsky exiled abroad were accused. Many thousands of people, often having absolutely nothing to do with any politics, were shot and sent
to prison and labor camps.
He replaced him with Yezhov, a Party secretary completely loyal to him.
Then the Yezhov terror, or Great Purge, began, when the victims ran into millions. A striking example is the crackdown on the military (Marshals Tukhachevsky, Yegorov, Blucher, and 40,000 Red commanders were shot), but hundreds of thousands of quite ordinary citizens of every class and occupation were also repressed, often to get the required figures of combating “enemies of people”).
a half. Then Stalin dumped Yezhov, accused him of all the outrages and executed him complete with his attendants. Beriya was appointed in his place, who had been 1st Secretary of Georgian Communist Party before that.
of Camps) continued to be enhanced.
The Soviet Union approached the World War II with a population that was intimidated, tyrannized, and inured to hardships.
Not long before the attack at Poland (beginning of WW2), Hitler concluded a non-aggression pact with the USSR – and a secret treaty, under which Stalin grabbed western Belorussia and Ukraine as parts of Poland, and was given freedom of action in the Baltic States and Finland. Two weeks after the German invasion of Poland, when the Polish government had fled Warsaw, the Red Army entered Poland’s eastern regions.
as a result of popular will expression, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were seized, after a mere 20 years of their first-gained nationhood.
of the Red Army, they managed to retain independence, losing only South Finland (Karelian Isthmus) with Vyborg.
the civil war. The Romanians had to give in. And one year after that, the Great Patriotic War began.
In the West, after a relatively quiet post-war period, a greatest economic crisis broke out (called “Great Depression” in America). Poverty of common people caused by it revived radical movements in European countries. Socialists came into power in France and Spain, and in Germany, Hitler’s National Socialists.
Franklin D. Roosevelt became US president, and declared the New Deal, where the state’s role noticeably increased. Hitler’s top priority was armament of Germany (“guns for butter”) for a new world war. Fascist Italy and the Japanese Empire who dreamed of world repartition in their favor became his allies. The Civil War in Spain where a socialist government was supported by the USSR and many volunteers from other countries, and the rebels by Germany and Italy, ended in a victoryof the Spanish fascists.
and then attacked Poland. Poland’s allies Britain and France declared war on Hitler. Hitler took over Denmark and Norway, routed France (the British troops evacuated from Dunkirk), occupied a half of it, then finished off Yugoslavia and Greece in a lightning march driving the British out of there, and started bombing English cities.
The interwar period was the noonday of cinema (first of all in America, also in Germany and France) and new forms in literature, music, and painting. Worldwide fame began for Hemingway, Simenon, Remarque, Sartre, Prokofiev, Schoenberg, Picasso, and Salvador Dali. Among noticeable phenomena in science, nuclear and quantum physics should be noted (Einstein, Planck, Bohr, Heisenberg, Fermi).
The Red Army was routed in Belorussia, quickly rolled back in the Baltics, and was retreating with dogged resistance in the south. In the very first weeks, the Germans took hundreds of thousands
of prisoners, and destroyed half of Soviet air force and armor.
of taking Leningrad and routing the Russians in Ukraine, reaching Rostov-on-Don at the same time, by the way.
The Germans did reach Leningrad – only to be stopped in its suburbs. They destroyed the Soviet front around Kiev and took new hundreds of thousands there, but were halted before Rostov.
And in Smolensk region, the German Army Group Center was stopped. Odessa held out in the Germans’ deep rear.
in Europe. The Germans were slowly pushing toward Moscow and Rostov; the mud season gave way to frost, for which the German army (Wehrmacht) was not prepared. The Germans stopped right before the Moscow; in Crimea, they failed to take Sevastopol; they took Rostov, but for just one week; having seized Tikhvin, the Germans were not far from Lake Ladoga and connecting with the Finns.
Meanwhile it became known that Germany’s ally Japan was not attacking the Soviet Union, but was going to open war against the United States in the Pacific instead. A great part of troops was redeployed from the Far East to the approaches to Moscow.
Hundreds of new T-34 tanks which outclassed the German ones were gathered on the Moscow axis. Katyusha missile launchers were implemented.
In severe frost, a counterattack was launched under general command of Zhukov, driving the Germans back from Moscow to 100-150 kilometers. Rostov in the south and Tikhvin in the north were taken back. But the siege of Leningrad was not broken.
Private citizens of America provided great relief sending mainly clothes and medicines.
It is to be noted here that Germany entered the war with Russia not alone but with allies – Romanians, Hungarians, Finns, Italians, and even a small Spanish unit. They fought worse than the Germans, but often as good as the Russians. With enhanced help of these countries, Hitler started the second year of the war.
The German strategists planned a powerful offensive in the south, across the Don to the Volga and the Caucasus, while holding the positions in the center and north. It was intended to cut the USSR from the Caucasus, from the Caucasian oil above all, and from supply from Iran via the Caspian Sea; along the way, the Germans wanted to get the Grozny oilfields (oil was scarce with Germany).
Less reliable Romanian and Italian troops were on the flanks of the German army.
In parallel to the Red Army’s counter-offensive in the south, the Rzhev operation was going on far in the north (in Tver Region). It is known by extreme losses of the Russians. Its purpose was to pin down the German forces and prevent their use at Stalingrad.
Simultaneously, the blockade of Leningrad was partially broken (but not lifted).
Paulus’s army held out in the “pocket” for two months. Simultaneous with its elimination, the Red Army entered Rostov. The German and Romanian troops having abandoned nearly all of Kuban now entrenched in Taman Peninsula and maintained communication with the main forces via Crimea only. The battle of Stalingrad made a tremendous impression on the whole world. It became evident that Hitler was losing the war. Besides, US troops disembarked in North Africa where the British had heavy fights against a small German army and the Italians, which meant inevitable defeat of the Germans.
But there was also a guerilla movement directed from the centre via NKVD.
It was especially developed in Belorussia, in some areas of Ukraine, and in Russia (“guerilla land” in Pskov Region). It was of great help in the period after the Stalingrad battle.
Of prisoners of war, subject to death were all Jews, commissars, Communists; ordinary POWs were sometimes shot too, but generally the death rate among Soviet prisoners due to hunger and cruel treatment was very high.
Germans were amply assisted in these crimes by local collaborators, first of all in Ukraine and the Baltics.
Nearer to the end of the war, the Germans made up a Russian Liberation Army (ROA) from Soviet prisoners of war, a “Vlassov” army, after the captured notorious Gen. Vlassov. It numbered over 100,000 soldiers.Retreating, the Germans often burnt and blasted residential houses and other buildings.
The unique Jewish civilization disappeared during the war in Ukraine, Belorussia, and Lithuania, where in large cities Jews were up to one half of the population, and in smaller localities (shtetl), up to 90%, Yiddish being an understandable spoken language.
a massive scale advanced combat materiel (T-34, Il-2 airplanes, Degtyarev machine guns, PPSh submachine guns, American vehicles Willys and Studebaker).
After Stalingrad, the Red Army moved far forward in the east of Ukraine; however, the Germans counterattacked, and managed to retake the freed Kharkov and Belgorod.
It was there that the tank battle at Prokhorovka, the largest in history (and unsuccessful for the Red Army) took place. But on the whole, the German offensive was repulsed, although with great losses; soon, the Germans left both Oryol and Belgorod.
After the Battle of Kursk, the Wehrmacht was falling back everywhere in Ukraine. (This was caused in particular by Italy’s withdrawal from the war and landing of the Allies in that country). The Red Army breached the Dnieper, and freed Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozhye, Kiev. In Belorussia, the fighting line shifted just a little westward; Leningrad remained under siege.
of “Stalin’s Ten Blows” by troops of the Leningrad (commended by Govorov) and Volkhov fronts. The enemy retreated to the Estonian border (Narva).
The Blockade of Leningrad lasted two tears and a half. 1,500,000 died from cold, hunger, and bombing. There were also hideous losses at the attempts to break the blockade: on Sinyavin Heights alone, over 100,000 were killed.
The biggest of the strikes was the Belorussian operation – debacle of the Army Group Center, complete liberation of Belorussia, ingress to the Vistula river in Poland and to the borders of East Prussia. With other blows the Red Army liberated Lvov, nearly all of the Baltics, entered Romania, and freed Vyborg. Romania and Finland entered the war on the Soviet Union’s side.
After the victorious march through the Balkans, the war’s last year started from the Red Army invading Hungary, where fierce fighting for Budapest soon started; Rokossovsky’s and Chernyakhovsky’s troops marching into East Prussia where Königsberg (a strong fortress) was besieged; advance in Slovakia; ingress to Vienna, the capital of Austria; and an offensive in Poland when Zhukov's and Konev's troops reached the Oder River, quite close to Berlin. In Hungary, the enemy even tried to attack (the Balaton operation).
The decisive battle of the war was taking Berlin by storm. The preparation for it took two months.
the Reichstag (German parliament),
the Russians entered the Reichskanzlei (Hitler’s government HQ).
Hitler committed suicide. The last war operation was the Prague one (liberation of Saxony and Czech Republic).
Soviet and American soldiers met
at the Elbe river.
The war victims were 27 million of Soviet citizens, combatant and civilian. In particular, Belorussia lost a quarter of its population; in many cities and villages, most men of drafting ages perished. (Stalin defined the losses of the USSR as 7 million, but he was generally prone to lying bare-faced “in the interests of the state.”). Millions were crippled and disabled. And the extent of damage
to property is difficult to describe at all.
to the West.
As to the victorious Russian nation, they lived very poorly after the war, they were really destitute, especially peasants (kolkhoz peasants in the Soviet newspeak). Also, a famine befell Russia, when about one million died. At the same time, the destroyed factories were restored, and new facilities built (Kuibyshev, Gorky, and Kama hydro power plants on the Volga; Main Turkmen Canal, later abandoned), mainly by convicts. Millions of people lived in dugouts, but at the same time, “the Stalin skyscrapers” were erected in Moscow (probably to keep up with “others,” i.e. with the United States).
a huge (by Soviet standards) navy was under construction, the aircraft and missile industry was developing. No one cared how the subhuman peasant lived, or if he had tea with sugar in it, or if he had a pair of shoes.
Of course, relatively few Jews suffered, but the rest understood that they were chalked up.
A whole era ended. For a quarter of a century, that man domineered over the Great Russia, he gave it great pain and great glory, he created countries by the snap of a finger and abolished other ones, he was “at a friendly footing” with Roosevelt and Churchill – and here you are, a banal stroke.
There are many myths and secrets surrounding the Kremlin court, though.
Not to be judged by someone else;
But you have passions, you have faults,
And you are mortal like myself.
And you will fall, and shed away,
Like faded leaves fall from the trees!
And you will die, and pass away,
Like smallest slaves of yours will cease!
Yes, the era ended, Stalin the man died, but the Stalin type regime (totalitarian regime) did not end (it would hold on 35 more years), but Stalin as idea is still alive.
of years by the so-called collective leadership where the key positions were initially held by Khruschev (who earlier had governed Moscow, and before that, Ukraine), Beriya, and Malenkov who became Prime Minister. In a few months, Beriya was deposed, accused of conspiracy and executed; his follower Malenkov was demoted; Khruschev became first secretary of the Central Committee, that is, first person of the state.
The Case of Doctors was closed, the arrested persons released; the Leningrad case was revised. Some megalomaniac projects were closed down; simultaneously, the space program was being deployed, the Virgin Lands plowing campaign began (in Kazakhstan, southern Siberia etc.)
a half in all). The purchasing prices for kolkhoz products were put up, and pensions were raised. After a few riots
in labor camps, the activities were sped up to release and rehabilitate political prisoners, who were quite many.
Gender-segregated school education of boys and girls introduced by Stalin in a fit of conservatism was canceled.
In response to emergence of the NATO alliance (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) the USSR set up a military organization of Warsaw Pact countries (Poland, Czechoslovakia, GDR = East Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria). The relations with Yugoslavia broken off by Stalin, returned to normal.
3 years after Stalin’s death, Khruschev delivered a report on the personality cult and its effects. What he said about the atrocities of the Stalin era (in which he himself and many in the audience actively participated) was not anything new, but the majority, both among the leadership and among common people, had thought it was a matter of course. Now they heard the Party’s person
No. 1 denouncing the late Stalin, Beriya, Yezhov.
In Hungary, after local Stalinists stepped down, an anti-communist rebellion started. It was crushed by Soviet troops with no small amount of bloodshed.
a rustic country. (True, it was rustic, but not quite). The USA began to invest very big money in education.
The same year, Khruschev got the upper hand of his old politburo comrades who found his policy liberal and unconsidered: Molotov, Malenkov, Kaganovich etc. They were labeled an anti-Party group and expelled from the Party. This (like Beriya’s arrest before that) was ensured by support from “the Victory Marshal” Zhukov. He was getting too independent, and he was accused of “Bonapartism” and fired.
The plots were curtailed, and the cattle was forcibly purchased by the state.
The kolkhoz people began to slaughter cattle, just like in old times; the livestock in the country dropped sharply.
While the kolkhoz peasants slaughtered cattle, the government slaughtered ships: Khruschev placed a premium on nuclear submarines, and ordered to scrap many ships under construction and even completed ships. This was generally justified, but done too hastily and vexed the military who in any case believed that they were given less than they deserved.
The first cosmonaut Gagarin traveled into space. It was a remarkable success. At the same time, the 22nd Congress of the CPSU was held, which finally condemned Stalin and his methods, and adopted a new CPSU Program: “This generation of Soviet people will live under communism.” Stalin’s relics were taken out of the Mausoleum where he was once put by the side of Lenin, but placed them near the Kremlin wall where “eminent personalities” are buried; his monuments (a lot of them were all over the country) were
all thrown down.
in agriculture. Another experiment (with
a meat and dairy prices rise and simultaneously dropped wages) resulted in the Novocherkassk riot (unarmed) with many fatalities and death sentences.
The USSR signed a partial test ban treaty with the US and the UK: from that time, only underground test detonations of nuclear weapons were permitted.
Eventually, Khruschev’s eccentric and impulsive rule bored the bosses (ruling elite, as they say today); they reproached him at the central committee plenary, and pensioned off. But he was not executed – ain’t that progress!
The State of Israel appeared on the map.
Khruschev was replaced by Brezhnev (initially just the first among equals). Kosygin was in charge of economy, and Suslov,
of ideology. Kosygin started reforms officially styled “new system of planning and economic incentives.”
is and the more potential leisure time he has for involvement in public affairs, and eventually in politics.
The USA got entangled in a war against the Communist regime of North Vietnam and guerilla movement in South Vietnam.
The USSR provided help to the Vietnamese communists, which was growing more and more expensive.
The USSR generally rendered aid to all foreign states or movements, which styled themselves Communist or Marxist, be it absolute savages or criminals somewhere in Africa.It was purposeless, and also cost money. At the same time, the living standards in the Soviet Union (even in Moscow) were several times lower than in Western Europe or the USA, although much higher than under Stalin or Khruschev.
Besides, the flats were not of super quality, they required many improvements, and given shortage of anything and everything, their finishing and furnishing was very difficult and very fiddly.
The labor efficiency in agriculture was low, the living conditions miserable, people were moving to cities; and food was annually purchased abroad for money received from oil and gas sales.
The USSR did not learn any lesson from the US intervention in Vietnam – and itself got entangled in an unnecessary, in the main, war in Afghanistan, to establish a pro-Soviet Communist regime there. (Kosygin was the only one in the Politburo to speak against the war).
There was much laughing in that epoch, and giggling, and chuckling. At the surrounding miserable, hand-to-mouth life, at the omnipotence and idiocy of authorities… and at “personally Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev.” Truth be told, he himself provoked that. He was made Marshal of the Soviet Union – and four times Hero of the Soviet Union (like Zhukov), Hero of the Soviet Labor into the bargain, and finally winner of the Lenin Prize for his memoirs (of course written by other, specially hired people).
It was a time for anonymous jokes; one of them went like this. “What were the names of our leaders in the 20th century? – Vladimir the Wise, Joseph the Terrible, Nikita the Wonderworker and Leonid the Chronicler.”
of détente” – Leonid Ilyich experienced clinical death, and afterwards spoke badly and indistinctly, suffering from cerebral atherosclerosis.
One more joke. Brezhnev hears a knock at the door. He puts on his glasses, takes a piece of paper out of his pocket, and reads from it, “Who’s there?”
a decorative figure, a symbol of “stability.”
Brezhnev’s successor was Andropov who had for many years headed the KGB (the same as Cheka, GPU or NKVD). He was of poor health, and ruled for a very short time, but still managed to persecute many bad guys of the previous reign.
A great part of Russians cheered up – there you go, they said, we’ll have law and order at last! …Meanwhile, the Cold War reached its climax: the President of the United States was Reagan, a brave hardboiled fellow, and it seemed that it was going to bang down in a little while (and this when a “hot” war in Afghanistan was in full swing).
The next General Secretary was Chernenko, a quite characterless figure, and also an old and sick man. So long as he did his secretarial duties (this too lasted very short), various factions in the politburo were preparing for the forthcoming clash.
A year later, Chernenko died. This string of pompous funerals was dubbed “a hearse race.”
The new Soviet leader was Gorbachev, a comparatively young man in the politburo of those days: just 54 years old!
Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary in March, and already at the April plenary of the Central Committee they talked about “signs of stagnation” and that something has to be changed little by little. The new General Secretary suddenly arrived in Leningrad, came to the corner of Nevsky and Ligovka and talked to crowding passers-by, promising to “move the country forward” and eagerly responding to dames’ appeals to combat boozing.
A temperance campaign began, which was of some use but awkward and hurry scurry. Next, “intensification” and “acceleration” started, i.e. working three shifts instead of two, but questions remained as to whether the goods so produced would be as fine as the Western ones. Following Khruschev’s example, the press raged at allotment gardeners who were “getting rich” on their plots (600 sq. meters or slightly more), growing carrots etc.
The Chernobyl nuclear disaster thundered; it was follows by other mega accidents, and then by an earthquake in Armenia; all that provided an alarming background for processes of renewal.
Then a young German amateur Mathias Rust flew in from West Germany through all borders in a light toy of a plane and landed on Red Square. It was a scandal – and a pretext for Gorbachev to fire several marshals and generals, indirectly winking to the nation: Look at the brass hats we have… they cannot have any success in Afghan either…
At a long last, the troops were pulled out of Afghanistan – after nine years of unnecessary, wrongful war.
Yeltsin who behaved like a populist, traveled to work by trolleybus, and fired
a few thieves of the terribly corrupted Moscow administration – was demoted to a second-rate position.
The Law on Cooperatives in the USSR was passed, a very long and tangled one, from which followed that the Stalin socialism was gone and a second edition of NEP, or in fact capitalism, was beginning.
Instead, many reformists were elected members of the USSR parliament, Yeltsin and Sakharov among them.
The Congress saw open-minded discussions on the country’s past, present, and future.
“A heap of minuscule men popped out.”
a million opinions on all matters.
A peaceful unaccustomed man felt his head was spinning, failing to tell truth from lies, or good from evil.
It was hectic on the fringe of the Soviet Union. A conflict (and later a war) was flaring up in the Caucasus between the Armenians and the Azeri; the Abkhaz republic was splitting from Georgia; a protest rally in the capital of Georgia was dispersed with several fatalities; the three Baltic republics were going to split from the USSR and did not conceal it.
There were also ethnic conflicts in Central Asia and Moldavia.
At the national Congress of Deputies Gorbachev was elected President of the USSR (the first and only one).
And at a communist party congress (the last one) Yeltsin declared he was leaving the party. Soon he was elected first President of Russia.
The Soviet Union was disintegrating.
The elites (plainly speaking, the bosses) were preparing for a new life: in constituent republics – without Russians, and in Russia – without the Lenin-Stalin party and without any ideology. Party officials and “Red directors” were already preparing for transfiguration into capitalists, businessmen.
a businessman. SCSE was arrested by Yeltsin’s order; they sent a plane to Crimea to collect Gorbachev, and he returned “to another country.”
Gorbachev stepped down as president of the USSR, the tricolor Russian flag was raised over the Kremlin instead of the burgundy red one. The Communist power came to an end in the 75th year of its existence.
so far fixed, had to be deregulated, otherwise there would be a famine.
It was done the next day after the New Year. Food not seen for ages appeared
in a wink – but at much higher prices.
A key issue was privatization. It involved privatization cheques or “vouchers,” securities for payment for State-run and municipal enterprises going private.
Each citizen of the Russian Federation (Russia) was entitled to one voucher.
As a result of dogged struggle of the forceful reformer Yeltsin against the old-regime, in fact half-Stalinist Supreme Soviet, Gaidar and some ministers had to go. But the new premier Chernomyrdin,
a notable gas industry manager (Gazprom), continued the same policy, but in a slower and more careful manner.
Finally, the President appeared on the TV reading his decree on “stage-by-stage constitutional reform,” which dismissed the Supreme Soviet. He also appointed Gaidar 1st Vice Premier, thus clearly labeling his democratic position.
Not a single MP was killed.
In a couple of months, elections were held to the State Duma (parliament) and the Federation Council (senate) replacing the Supreme Soviet, and simultaneously a new Constitution of Russia was adopted by referendum, valid with some amendments up to this day.
A year later, the First Chechen War started, which lasted one year and a half. In fact, the independence of Chechnya, previously an autonomic republic as part of Russia, was declared before the August coup attempt by its president Dudaev, a former Soviet general. Other autonomous republics of Russia, such as Tatarstan and Bashkiria, had also declared their independence, but an arrangement with them was reached.
(The broad masses of Russians were in
a poor state: the payment of pensions, benefits and wages were delayed for half a year, the class inequality was annoying, mobsters were a second government here there and everywhere – and a small successful war could improve the government’s image).
It was probable that Zyuganov, the CPRF candidate, would also win in the presidential election next year. Yeltsin’s poll numbers were extremely low. But he decided to fight. He authorized the well-known Gen. Lebed to sign a cease-fire with the Chechens (the Khasavyurt Accord).
The first ballot did not determine the winner; Yeltsin and Zyuganov made it to the 2nd ballot.
a plan to cancel the election, i.e. to make the president an authoritarian dictator, but that plan failed, and Chubais was appointed head of Yeltsin’s campaign office. The second ballot took place; Yeltsin won, by right or wrong.
The kingdom of oligarchs and “the family” (inner circle of ill and drinking president Yeltsin) came.
The top few percent of Russians and their servants were in bliss and bathed in tasteless luxury; the rest were neglected.
That government managed to set things right; the economy recovered after a sort in half a year – exports grew, and imported goods that went up were replaced with Russian-made ones.
Of Primakov’s foreign policy actions, his “turn over the Atlantic” is known (the premier was flying to the USA on an official visit, but returned to Moscow having learned that the USA had started bombing Yugoslavia).
Putin succeeded in driving the Chechen gangs out of Dagestan; the federal troops then entered Chechnya. Air bombing and artillery shelling was widely used; Chechnya’s capital was completely ruined.
The separatists proceeded to sabotage and terror (the most known are seizure of the theater in Dubrovka in Moscow and of a school in Beslan); Akhmat Kadyrov was assassinated by a mine explosion. His son Ramzan Kadyrov soon became president of Chechnya. All militant chieftains were killed by various techniques, in particular outside Russia.
The acts of terrorism continued some years more, then declined. Putin became popular with commoners, and even with some intellectuals. (Although in some liberal circles he was talked of mockingly and scornfully). President Yeltsin made it clear that
he considered Putin his successor.
a legislative (Duma) election campaign proceeded. Along with the communists, the players were Fatherland – All Russia (party of Primakov and Luzhkov opposed to “the family”), Kirienko’s Union of Right Forces, Yavlinsky’s Yabloko, and Zhirinovsky’s party LDPR.
On the eve of the New Year, the first year of the new millennium, Yeltsin abdicated (“I’m tired, I’m leaving”) and handed the reigns
of power over to Putin.
Soon after, premature presidential elections were held. Putin won in the first ballot, far ahead of Zyuganov (CPRF) and Yavlinsky (Yabloko). By coincidence, the world oil and gas prices (main exports goods of those days’ Russia) began their growth, which lasted almost nine years.
Assisted by premier Kasyanov and minister of finance Kudrin, Putin did much for consolidation of economy, and for raising the income of most Russians. After a long break, pensions, benefits, and salaries were paid out regularly.
An authoritarian rule of President Putin was set up. In the next Duma and presidential elections, United Russia (party in power) and Putin won by a tremendous majority, and that even without much rigging.
but even that was a tremendous progress compared to Yeltsin’s reign.
And in the USA, euphoria began after the breakup of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. (Aside from a short-lived but large mutiny of Negroes in Los Angeles). Everything was fine, America remained the only and unattainable superpower, feared and obeyed by (almost) everyone, where prosperity was growing for (almost) everyone. The clever Democrat president Bill Clinton was checked and balanced by a clever Republican senate.
The Internet, mobile phones… unprecedented progress! The NATO extended to the Eastern European countries… Sure, the national debt grew enormously, but that, too, suited everyone. This lasted about 10 tears.
And then Bush Jr. (not very clever) won the (controversial) presidential elections. Everything in a heap went off the rails: Islamic terrorists’ attack on the twin towers in New York… endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan… Hurricane Katrina… and the economic growth of the red China, which was already ahead of the USA in industrial output. The next president Obama did not improve the situation, but only split the society. Besides, after the crash of the investment bank Lehman Brothers, a world crisis began (lasting up to this day). Every fifth American received food stamps.
In Europe, they lived quietly, snugly, prosperously, like in paradise, like before WW1. (Aside from outbursts of Islamic terrorism).
The source of Islamic terrorism (the organizations al Qaeda, ISIS etc.) was (and still is) in Asia, in Middle East, but has spread from there to Africa and Central Asia.
Africa remained the poorest continent; here and there bloody, cannibalistic civil wars broke out.
In the conditions of this stability, and in particular full control over the mass media (but not over the internet, of course) the second term of President Putin was coming to an end – according to the constitution, a third term in a row is not permitted.
In “Medvedev’s” term, the public life became a bit more liberal. Corruption, which was rather high indeed, was discussed and condemned in full blast. The majority’s living standards did not drop so much, but they did not rise.
Even on some TV channels one could hear liberal talking, and much more in the internet.. No great changes took place in the next three years. Luzhkov, Mayor of Moscow, was dismissed after a nearly 20-year rule; the militia was called now more traditionally, i.e. the police; a large network of Russian agents headed by Anna Chapman was detected in the United States.
It was impossible to disavow this, although the authorities did their best. There were crowded demonstrations, assemblies, rallies – first of all in Moscow, but also in Petersburg and some other cities.
The protests lasted for about a year and a half. Putin, elected President for a new term, was generally almost tolerable to them, although a few people were sentenced to minor terms. Then the opposition somehow calmed down.
The winter Olympic Games became
a very costly, but also a very impressive event.
Immediately after the Games' finish, successful for Russia, the Russian troops entered Crimea, a part of Ukraine, and captured it actually without a shot. Based on the results of a referendum conducted there, the Duma passed a constitutional law accepting the Republic of Crimea as part of the RF.
Sergei Suslov aka lemuel55 , St. Petersburg, January 2022
