Encyclopedia of Russian History

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the top authority in legal theory, and he is re-

membered for reviving the pre-1845 doctrine of

“confession as the queen of evidence” in political

cases. During Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization, Vy-

shinsky’s theory of law was condemned, and his

position as a legal authority undermined.

See also: PURGES, THE GREAT; SHOW TRIALS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Sharlet, Robert, and Beirne, Piers. (1990). “In Search of

Vyshinsky: The Paradox of Law and Terror.” In Rev-

olution in Law: Contributions to the Development of

Soviet Legal Theory, 1917–1938, ed. Piers Beirne. Ar-

monk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.

Vaksberg, Arkady. (1991). Stalin’s Prosecutor: The Life of

Andrei Vyshinsky. New York: Grove Weidenfeld.

ETER

H. S

OLOMON

VYSHNEGRADSKY, IVAN ALEXEYEVICH

(1831–1895), scientist and mechanic, Russian fi-

nance minister from 1887 to 1892.

Ivan Vyshnegradsky was born into a priest’s

family. After graduating from the Tver Theologi-

cal Seminary and later from the Main Pedagogical

Institute, he taught mathematics and mechanics

(engineering) at St. Petersburg military educational

institutions, headed the department of mechanics

at the St. Petersburg Technological Institute, and

served as the Institute’s director from 1875 to

1878. Vyshnegradsky is known as a prominent sci-

entist in the sphere of mechanics and mechanical

engineering and also as the author of several fun-

damental works and manuals. He participated in

managing a number of joint-stock companies and

earned fame as a talented entrepreneur. By the time

he was appointed a government minister, his for-

tune amounted to nearly a million rubles. In 1884

Vyshnegradsky became a member of the Council

of the Minister of Public Instruction. He drew up

a program for technical education and participated

in the composition of the university code.

In 1886 he was appointed a member of the

State Council and in 1887 became the head of the

Ministry of Finance. In this post, Vyshnegradsky,

like his predecessor Nikolai Bunge, pursued a pol-

icy aimed at settlement of the budget deficit,

stronger government interference in setting freight

rates for private railways, nationalization of the

least profitable railways, support of domestic in-

dustry, and preparation of a monetary reform. By

increasing indirect taxes, converting state loans and

reducing interest payments on them, encouraging

grain exports and limiting imports, and increasing

railway freight rates, Vyshnegradsky managed to

balance the budget, accumulate gold reserves,

strengthen the paper ruble, and prepare the intro-

duction of gold circulation. In 1891 a new tariff,

the most protectionist in Europe, was introduced.

It signified the transition from a safeguard system

of tariffs to a consistently protective one. In order

to ease criticism on the part of landowners and

rightists, Vyshnegradsky described his course as

nationalist and supported landlords through the

Nobleman’s Bank (Dvoryansky bank). In 1892 he

was discharged from office for health reasons.

See also: ECONOMY, TSARIST; MINISTRIES, ECONOMIC

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Stepanov, Valery Leonidovich. (1996). “Three Ministers

of Finance in Postreform Russia.” Russian Studies in

History 35(2).

ORIS

N. M

IRONOV

VYSOTSKY, VLADIMIR SEMYONOVICH

(January 25, 1938–July 25, 1980), poet, actor,

singer.

Vladimir Semyonovich Vysotsky was born and

brought up in central Moscow. He made his living

as an actor, joining Yuri Lyubimov’s company at

the Taganka Theatre in 1964 and performing there

to the end of his life. He was a mainstay of the the-

atre’s ensemble style, but also took the leading role

in several epoch-making productions, notably as

Galileo in Brecht’s play, and then as a generation-

defining Hamlet. Besides the theatre, Vysotsky reg-

ularly appeared in films, usually playing “bad boy”

roles. Part of his stock-in-trade as an actor was the

performance of songs to guitar accompaniment,

and it was in this genre, delivering his own words,

that he became more famous in his own lifetime

than any other Russian creative artist.

The beginning of Vysotsky’s professional life

coincided with the appearance of guitar poetry,

which in its turn was enabled by the availability

of the portable tape recorder in the USSR. Vysot-

sky’s songs could therefore be recorded free of

VYSOTSKY, VLADIMIR SEMYONOVICH

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

official controls, and the results duplicated. The

popularity of these homemade tapes, and the semi-

legal appearances Vysotsky made in clubs and

other institutions, brought him to the attention of

the authorities. He was subjected to harrassment

because, in official eyes, the content and especially

the style of his songs, saturated with robust hu-

mor, were unacceptable even within the relatively

permissive boundaries of Socialist Realism in its

later phases. Vysotsky was regularly censured by

various official bodies, but, shielded by his un-

precedented popularity, he was never subjected to

serious reprisals.

Vysotsky was a prodigious creator of lyrics,

consistent with his extravagant, extravert person-

ality. His songs fall broadly into two successive

chronological phases and two generic categories. In

the earlier phase, he created hundreds of songs in

which the author speaks through a persona. They

include songs about military life, which formed the

most officially acceptable segment of the repertoire

and were in many cases created for theatre pro-

ductions or films. Then there were songs about

sport (running, soccer, weightlifting, even chess).

There was also a series of love songs, which por-

tray relationships in either a disenchanted, even

cynical manner, or else idealize the female. The

most dubious songs from the official point of view

concern criminals; they are violent in their actions

and crude and direct in their thoughts. The second,

and on the whole later, segment of Vysotsky’s

repertoire consists of songs in which the author

speaks from an explicitly autobiographical stance.

These songs express mounting frustration and de-

spair; they were driven by Vysotsky’s addictive

personality and the ravages it inflicted on his phys-

ical and mental stability.

While there was constant disagreement during

his lifetime about whether Vysotsky was a mere

entertainer or merited serious consideration as a

poet, his work illustrated the arbitrariness of this

distinction. The literary establishment regarded

him as an embarrassment, often out of envy and

resentment for his genuine popularity, and con-

nived with their political masters in denying Vysot-

sky access to the public media. His spectacular

marriage, his third, to the French film star Marina

Vlady was another source of friction. Vysotsky

made a few records in the USSR, most of them

bowdlerized, but he was never allowed to publish

a book. This attitude changed only after his death,

especially with the onset of glasnost; a small col-

lection of lyrics appeared in 1982, and since then

there has been a torrent of publication and discus-

sion.

Vysotsky’s songs imply a crude but coherent

system of values whose core is masculinist indi-

vidualism. The consequences may be tragic for him,

but he still rises to the test. The appeal of this hero,

to men and women alike throughout the social

spectrum of Soviet Russia, made Vysotsky an idol

who was felt to speak for the people more gen-

uinely than any other contemporary; there is no

more telling case of the discontinuity between pop-

ular acclaim and official recognition in the Brezh-

nev period.

See also: DISSIDENT MOVEMENT; MUSIC; OKUDZHAVA,

BULAT SHALOVICH

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Beumers, Birgit. (1997). Yury Liubimov at the Taganka The-

atre, 1964–1994. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic.

Shkolnikova, Mariya. (1996-2002). Vladimir Vysotsky: The

Official Site. <http://www.kulichki.com/vv/eng>

Smith, Gerald Stanton. (1984). Songs to Seven Strings:

Russian Guitar Poetry and Soviet “Mass Song.” Bloom-

ington: Indiana University Press.

ERALD

MITH

VYSOTSKY, VLADIMIR SEMYONOVICH

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

Singer-actor Vladimir Vysotsky performing one of his popular

ballads. © TASS/SOVFOTO. R

EPRINTED WITH PERMISSION

WAGES, SOVIET

Wages in the Soviet Union were supposed to con-

form to Marx’s notion of the lower stage of com-

munist society in which workers would be paid

according to their contributions to the social prod-

uct and on the basis of equal rewards for equal

work. Factors taken into account in the assignment

of wage levels typically included the arduousness

and dangerousness of work, skill levels or neces-

sary qualifications, and the degree of responsibil-

ity. Occupations in which women predominated,

such as teaching, medicine, infant care, cleaning,

and clerical and sales work, invariably were graded

below male-dominated occupations.

In early 1918 Lenin advocated the use of piece-

work as opposed to time-based wages as an appro-

priate system to stimulate labor discipline and

productivity. He also grudgingly acknowledged the

necessity of paying specialists (e.g., managers and

engineers) more than ordinary workers. Although

these policies were opposed by the Left Communist

faction and many rank-and-file Bolsheviks, they

were incorporated into the wage scales constructed

by respective trade unions. During the years of war

communism, labor was in effect an obligatory ser-

vice to the embattled state, which in turn assumed

the responsibility to provide work and at least a

caloric minimum in the form of employee rations.

Payment in kind was ubiquitous, and no sooner did

workers receive their wage than they repaired to the

black market to barter it for other goods.

The semblance of a normal monetary system

of wages, based on contractual agreements between

trade unions and corresponding trusts, developed

under the New Economic Policy, and wages rose

steadily. By 1927 nominal wages were estimated

to be about 11 percent above the 1913 average, and

this did not include the socialized wage consisting

of free medical care, social insurance, and other

welfare provisions. Whereas the First Five-Year

Plan envisioned a further increase in nominal wages

of 44 percent and real wages of nearly 68 percent—

in fact, the standard of living of wage earners

plummeted. It is estimated that by 1932 real wages

were at about 50 percent of their 1928 level. More-

over, shortages in cooperative stores drove work-

ers to rely on the private market, where prices of

agricultural produce were approximately eight

times higher than in 1928. The prevailing labor

shortage caused employers to resort to various

sleights of hand to attract and retain workers. They

included paying workers at grades higher than

1657

those outlined in wage handbooks, granting special

bonuses that amounted to permanent additions to

their basic pay, paying for fictitious piece work and

defective output, and manipulating the use of the

progressive bonus system for overfulfillment of

production quotas. Despite their technical illegal-

ity, these practices became permanent features of

Soviet economic life.

In 1931 the state introduced a wage-scale re-

form under the banner of combating petty bour-

geois egalitarianism that widened differentials

between lower and higher wage-tariff categories.

Simultaneously it expanded the use of progressive

piece-rates that would rise with the increase of in-

dividual workers’ actual output. This approach re-

mained in force until the late 1950s when a new

wage reform was gradually phased in. It entailed

increases in basic wages and production quotas, the

reduction in the number of wage scales and the

simplification of rates within each scale, the elim-

ination of progressive piece-rates, and a modest

shift of pieceworkers to time-based wages. The ma-

jor objective of the reforms—to create a stable and

predictable system of incentives—appears to have

failed largely because of the uncertainties and ir-

regularities of supplies and managerial collusion

with workers in compensating for them. Hence the

Brezhnev-era aphorism, “They pretend to pay us,

and we pretend to work.”

See also: ECONOMIC GROWTH, SOVIET; MONETARY OVER-

HANG; WAR COMMUNISM

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Filtzer, Donald. (1986). Soviet Workers and Stalinist In-

dustrialization: The Formation of Modern Soviet Pro-

duction Relations, 1928–1941. Armonk, NY: M. E.

Sharpe.

Filtzer, Donald. (1992). Soviet Workers and De-Staliniza-

tion: The Consolidation of the Modern System of Soviet

Production Relations, 1953–1964. Cambridge, UK:

Cambridge University Press.

EWIS

H. S

IEGELBAUM

WANDERERS, THE See GOLDEN AGE OF RUSSIAN LIT-

ERATURE; NATIONALISM IN THE ARTS.

WAR COMMUNISM

The Bolshevik Party seized power in Russia in Oc-

tober 1917. Historians use the term war commu-

nism for the economic system of Soviet Russia dur-

ing the civil war that followed this revolution. This

term, not used at the time, was first applied when

the civil war had already drawn to a close. In the

spring of 1921, advocating a shift toward a more

liberalized internal market, Lenin described the sys-

tem as “that peculiar war communism, forced on

us by extreme want, ruin and war.” He went on

to define its core as the centralized system of con-

fiscating all of the peasants’ food surpluses, and

more, in order to feed the urban workers and the

soldiers of the Red Army. He meant that war com-

munism was a temporary phenomenon—not real

communism—just a necessary evil required by

wartime circumstances. He intended thereby to dis-

tance himself from it and inaugurate a more re-

laxed regime later known as the New Economic

Policy (NEP).

A few years later, however, Stalin adopted poli-

cies that resembled war communism in several fea-

tures, including specifically the confiscation of

peasant food surpluses. Consequently many histo-

rians now reject Lenin’s claim that war commu-

nism was an unintended consequence of special

circumstances, and argue that the Bolsheviks al-

ways intended to build a society based on central-

ization and force.

It took more than six months for a full-scale

civil war to break out after the October 1917 rev-

olution. The Bolsheviks did not try immediately to

centralize the economy. They negotiated for a sep-

arate peace with Germany to take Russia out of

World War I. They brought representatives of the

non-Bolshevik left into a coalition government.

While they legislated to nationalize the landed es-

tates of the aristocracy, they sought a coexistence

of capitalist and commercial private property with

state regulation and workers’ rights of inspection.

The results, however, threatened the Bolsheviks

with a loss of control on each front. The peace

treaty signed with Germany in March 1918 pro-

voked military intervention by Russia’s former al-

lies. Its humiliating terms drove the Bolsheviks’

coalition partners toward the monarchist counter-

revolution. Under the treaty, Russia lost the Ukraine;

this cut the food available to Russia’s nonfarm pop-

ulation. The wartime system of food distribution

that the Bolsheviks had inherited from the imper-

ial government was ineffective: While the urban

population was entitled to receive a food ration at

low fixed prices, at the same prices the peasants

would not sell food to the government for distrib-

ution. As the situation worsened, many groups of

WANDERERS, THE

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

workers blamed the factory owners, expelled them,

and declared the factories to be state property. In

the countryside, instead of government takeover of

the great estates, the peasants divided the land

among themselves.

As of 1918 the Bolsheviks began to travel a

path of extreme political and economic centraliza-

tion. They nationalized the banks in January. In

April they enacted state monopolies in foreign trade

as well as internal trade in foodstuffs. In June they

brought the commanding heights of industry into

the public sector. This path ended in a one-party

state underpinned by a secret police and a demon-

etized command economy with virtually all in-

dustry nationalized and farm food surpluses liable

to violent seizure. The Bolsheviks traveled will-

ingly, justifying their actions in the name of so-

cialism. They blamed their difficulties on a minority

of speculators and counterrevolutionaries with

whom there could be no compromise. This inten-

sified the polarization between Reds and Whites

that ended in civil war.

Food shortages drove this process along. Short-

ages were felt first by the towns and the army, be-

cause peasants fed themselves before selling food to

others. Shortages arose primarily from the wartime

disruption of trade, the loss of the Ukraine, and the

government’s attempts to hold down food prices.

The Bolsheviks overestimated peasant food stocks;

this meant that when they failed to raise food they

blamed the peasants for withholding it. They

specifically blamed a minority of richer peasants,

the so-called kulaks, for speculating in food by

withholding it intentionally so as to raise its price.

Between April and June of 1918 they slid from ban-

ning private trade in foodstuffs to a campaign to

seize kulak food stocks and then to confiscate their

land as well. Since rural food stocks were smaller

and more scattered than the government believed,

such measures tended to victimize many ordinary

peasants without improving supplies.

Under war communism between the summer

of 1918 and the spring of 1921, goods were dis-

tributed by administrative rationing or barter; with

more than 20 percent monthly inflation, prices rose

in total by many thousand times, and the money

stock lost most of its real value. The government

seized food from the peasantry, but, as there was

not enough to meet workers’ needs, black markets

developed where urban residents bartered their

products and property with peasants for additional

food. Industry was nationalized far more widely

than the commanding heights listed in the June

1918 decree. By November 1920 public ownership

extended to many artisan establishments with one

or two workers. Public-sector management was

centralized under a command system of adminis-

trative quotas and allocations.

War communism was not an economic suc-

cess. Food procurements rose at first, but indus-

trial production and employment, harvests, and

living standards fell continuously. The fact that the

Bolsheviks emerged victorious from the civil war

owed more to their enemies’ moral and material

weaknesses than to their own strengths. Despite

this, they did not abandon war communism im-

mediately when the war came to an end. By the

spring of 1920, fighting continued only in Poland

and the Caucasus. Still, war communism was up-

held. While Lenin defended the system of food

procurement against its critics, other Bolsheviks

advocated extending control over peasant farming

through sowing plans and over industrial workers

through militarization of labor.

Such dreaming was rudely interrupted in early

1921 by an anti-Bolshevik mutiny in the Kronstadt

naval base and a wave of peasant discontent con-

centrated in the Tambov province. It was not the

end of the civil war, but the threat of another, that

brought war communism to an end. This does not

prove that the Bolsheviks had always intended to

introduce something like war communism; how-

ever, it shows that Lenin was disingenuous to sug-

gest that war communism was only a product of

circumstances. In the case of war communism, the

Bolsheviks willingly made virtues out of apparently

necessary evils, then took them much further than

necessary. Moreover, one product of civil war cir-

cumstances was never abandoned: the one-party

state underpinned by a secret police.

See also: CIVIL WAR OF 1917–1922; LENIN, VLADIMIR ILICH;

NEW ECONOMIC POLICY; OCTOBER REVOLUTION;

STALIN, JOSEF VISSARIONOVICH

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Boettke, Peter J. (1990). The Political Economy of Soviet So-

cialism: The Formative Years, 1918–1928. Boston:

Kluwer Academic.

Carr, Edward Hallett. (1952). The Bolshevik Revolution,

1917–1923, vol. 2. London: Macmillan.

Davies, Robert W. (1989). “Economic and Social Policy

in the USSR, 1917–41.” In The Cambridge Economic

History of Europe, vol. 8: The Industrial Economies: The

Development of Economic and Social Policies, eds. Peter

Mathias and Sidney Pollard. Cambridge, UK: Cam-

bridge University Press.

WAR COMMUNISM

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

Lih, Lars T. (1990). Bread and Authority in Russia,

1914–1921. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Malle, Silvana. (1985). The Economic Organization of War

Communism, 1918–1921. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge

University Press.

Nove, Alec. (1992). An Economic History of the USSR,

1917–1991, 3rd ed. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin

Books.

Zaleski, Eugene. (1962). Planning for Economic Growth in

the Soviet Union, 1918–1932. Chapel Hill: University

of North Carolina Press.

ARK

ARRISON

WAR ECONOMY

The German invasion of June 22, 1941, was an

event for which the Soviet Union had been prepar-

ing for fifteen years. Soviet war preparations were

started in the mid-1920s at a time when no im-

mediate threat of war existed. Stalin and other Bol-

shevik leaders were preoccupied by the fate of the

Russian Empire in World War I. Although Russia

entered that war with a substantial food surplus,

its economy was destabilized by the mobilization

of industry; this deprived the countryside of man-

ufactured commodities, and peasant farmers ceased

to sell food in exchange. As a result, the towns and

military units went increasingly hungry to a point

where industry and the army collapsed. Stalin

intended to avoid a repetition. Forced industrializa-

tion would raise the economy’s capacity for pro-

ducing weapons, while farm collectivization would

prevent the peasants from retreating again into

self-sufficiency. Although brutally and wastefully

executed, these policies contributed significantly to

Soviet resistance when Germany attacked.

At first the war went worse than envisaged in

the most pessimistic prewar plans. Soviet territory

was deeply invaded; the real output of the terri-

tory under Soviet control fell by one-third; and the

burdens of defense increased both relatively and ab-

solutely. By 1943 three-fifths of Soviet output was

devoted to the war effort, the highest proportion

observed at the time in any economy that did not

subsequently collapse under the strain. A railway

evacuation of factories and machinery from the

zones threatened by occupation shifted the geo-

graphical center of the war economy hundreds of

kilometers to the east. The production of weapons

rose to a level that exceeded Germany’s through-

out the war.

There was little detailed planning behind this;

the important decisions were made in a chaotic, un-

coordinated sequence. The civilian economy was

neglected and it declined rapidly. By 1942, food, fu-

els, and metals produced had fallen by half or more.

Living standards fell on average by two-fifths while

millions were severely overworked and under-

nourished; however, the state procurement of food

from collective farms ensured that industrial work-

ers and soldiers were less likely to starve than peas-

ants. Still the process might have ended in another

economic collapse without the stunning victory

over the German army at Stalingrad at the end of

1942. This enabled a return to economic planning

and a partial restoration of resources to civilian

uses. Foreign (mostly American) aid, which added

about 5 percent to Soviet resources in 1942 and 10

percent in 1943 and 1944, also relieved the pres-

sure.

The war had lasting economic consequences. It

took the lives of one in six Soviet citizens living at

its outset, and destroyed perhaps one quarter of the

Soviet prewar capital stock. Economic and demo-

graphic recovery took decades. The success of the

war effort also had lasting consequences: It con-

firmed the authority of Stalin, as well as that of a

new generation of wartime industrial and political

managers who survived him and remained in

power for thirty more years. The success of the

war economy was used to discourage critical think-

ing about basic economic policies and institutions.

For example, Stalin claimed that the war demon-

strated the superiority of the Soviet system over

capitalism for organizing economic life in both

wartime and peacetime.

See also: COLLECTIVIZATION OF AGRICULTURE; STALIN-

GRAD, BATTLE OF; STALIN, JOSEF VISSARIONOVICH;

WORLD WAR I; WORLD WAR II

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Barber, John, and Harrison, Mark. (1991). The Soviet

Home Front: A Social and Economic History of the USSR,

1941–1945. London: Longman.

Harrison, Mark. (1996). Accounting for War: Soviet Pro-

duction, Employment, and the Defence Burden,

1940–1945. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University

Press.

Harrison Mark, ed. (1998). The Economics of World War

II: Six Great Powers in International Comparison. Cam-

bridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Samuelson, Lennart. (2000). Plans for Stalin’s War Ma-

chine: Tukhachevskii and Military-Economic Planning,

1925-1941. London: Macmillan.

WAR ECONOMY

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

Simonov, Nikolai S. (1996). “’Strengthen the Defence of

the Land of the Soviets’: The 1927 ‘War Alarm’

and Its Consequences.” Europe-Asia Studies 48(8):

1355–64.

ARK

ARRISON

WAR OF THE THIRD COALITION

One of the Napoleonic wars, the War of the Third

Coalition, occurred between 1805 and 1807. Rus-

sia first participated in the conflicts arising from

France’s efforts to expand its dominance over con-

tinental Europe and the Middle East in 1798, in the

War of the Second Coalition, along with Great

Britain, Austria, Prussia, and the Ottoman Empire.

Most of the direct Russian involvement was in the

Eastern and Northern Mediterranean, with Admi-

ral Fedor Ushakov occupying the Ionian Islands and

General Alexander Suvorov campaigning through

Italy. Emperor Paul, however, became annoyed

with his allies, especially Britain. In 1800 he with-

drew and formed an alliance with France, led by

Napoleon Bonaparte. This dramatic reversal con-

tributed to a reaction and the assassination of Paul

in March 1801.

His successor, Alexander I, influenced by pro-

British and anti-French advisers such as Adam

Czartoryski, signed an alliance with Britain in April

1805. This was the linchpin of a third coalition war

against Napoleon that also included Austria,

Naples, and Prussia. Russian action again centered

on the Mediterranean, with a fleet under Admiral

Dmitri Seniavin sent from the Baltic to assure

dominance of the Adriatic Sea and curb French ex-

pansion into the Balkans, especially at the fortress-

stronghold of Ragusa (Dubrovnik). Though the

British reaffirmed their supremacy over the French

at sea at the Battle of Trafalgar (September 1805),

poor Russian and Austrian leadership on land in

Central Europe led to Napoleon’s decisive victories,

especially at Austerlitz in December 1805. Austria

was forced to sign a peace treaty, while Russia suf-

fered additional defeats. Finally, at a historic meet-

ing between Napoleon and Alexander I at Tilsit in

July 1807, Russia agreed to peace terms that aban-

doned its Mediterranean positions to Napoleon and

joined the French Continental System against

Britain, thus leaving all of Europe except Russia un-

der French dominance. Napoleon’s effort to expand

that dominance to Russia in 1812 provoked an-

other coalition war that led to his eventual defeat.

See also: ALEXANDER I; AUSTERLITZ, BATTLE OF;

NAPOLEON I; TILIST, TREATY OF

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Mackesy, Piers. (1957). The War in the Mediterranean,

1803–1810. London: Longmans, Green.

Saul, Norman E. (1970). Russia and the Mediterranean,

1797–1807. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

ORMAN

E. S

AUL

WARSAW, BATTLE OF See WORLD WAR II.

WARSAW TREATY ORGANIZATION

The Warsaw Treaty Organization (WTO), also re-

ferred to as the Warsaw Pact, was created on May

14, 1955, by Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia,

East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the

Soviet Union. Officially known as the Warsaw

Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual As-

sistance, it was a Soviet-led political and military

alliance intended to harness the potential of East-

ern Europe to Soviet military strategy and to con-

solidate Soviet control of Eastern Europe during the

Cold War. The organization was used to suppress

dissent in Eastern Europe through military action.

It never enlarged beyond its original membership,

and was dissolved in 1991, prior to the disintegra-

tion of the Soviet Union itself.

The Soviet and East European governments

presented the WTO as their response to the creation

of the Western European Union and the integra-

tion of West Germany into the North Atlantic

Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1955. Though of-

ten described as an alliance, the facade of collective

decision-making in WTO masked the reality of

Soviet political and military domination. The 1955

treaty established the Joint Command of the armed

forces (Article 5) and the Political Consultative

Committee (Article 6), both headquartered in

Moscow. In practice, however, the Joint Command,

as well as the Joint Staff drawn from the general

staffs of the signatories, were part of the Soviet

General Staff. Both the Pact’s commander in chief

and its chief of staff were Soviet officers. The Joint

Armed Forces had no command structure, logis-

tics, directorate of operations, or air defense net-

work separate from the Soviet defense ministry.

WARSAW TREATY ORGANIZATION

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

Over the years the military structure of the

Warsaw Pact was adjusted to reflect the evolution

of Soviet strategy and changes in military tech-

nology. During the first decade of the organi-

zation’s existence, political control over the

non-Soviet forces was its principal focus. Follow-

ing Stalin’s death, East European militaries were

partly renationalized, including the replacement of

Soviet officers in high positions with indigenous

personnel, and a renewed emphasis on professional

training. The Polish October of 1956, and the Hun-

garian revolt that same year, raised serious con-

cerns in Moscow about the reliability of non-Soviet

Warsaw Pact forces.

In the 1960s the lessons learned from de-

Stalinization, as well as Albania’s defection from

the Warsaw Pact, brought about greater integra-

tion of the WTO through joint military exercises,

intensified training, and the introduction of new

Soviet equipment. The most significant reorgani-

zation of the WTO took place in 1969, including

the addition of the Committee of Defense Ministers,

the Military Council, the Military Scientific Tech-

nical Council, and the Technical Committees. These

and subsequent changes allowed increased partici-

pation from the East Europeans in decision mak-

ing, and helped the Soviets better coordinate

weapons research, development, and production

with the East Europeans.

In addition to its external defensive role against

NATO, the Warsaw Pact served to maintain cohe-

sion in the Soviet bloc. It was used to justify the

invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, and again to

prepare for an invasion of Poland in 1980 or 1981

if the Polish regime failed to suppress the Solidar-

ity movement. The Warsaw Pact was also an in-

strument of Soviet policy in the Third World. In

the 1970s and 1980s the Soviet Union relied on

several non-Soviet WTO members to assist client

states in Africa and the Middle East.

The alliance began to unravel with the intro-

duction of Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika in the

Soviet Union, and his attendant redefinition of

Soviet-East European relations. Though the alliance

was renewed in 1985, as required by the treaty,

deteriorating economic conditions and the rising

national aspirations in Eastern Europe put its fu-

ture in question. The Soviet military attempted to

adjust to the shifting political landscape. In 1987

the WTO modified its doctrine to emphasize its de-

fensive character, but this and other proposed

changes proved insufficient to arrest the decompo-

sition of the alliance. The key development that

hastened the WTO’s demise was the unification of

Germany, which constituted an irreparable breach

in the Pact’s security perimeter. Under pressure

from Eastern Europe, the decision to abolish the

military structures of the Pact was taken at a Po-

litical Consultative Committee meeting in Budapest

in late February 1991; the remaining political struc-

tures were formally abolished on July 1, 1991.

The overall value of the Warsaw Pact to the

Soviet Union during the Cold War remains a point

of debate. Clearly, the organization legitimized the

continued Soviet garrisoning of Eastern Europe and

provided additional layers of political and military

control. In addition, the potential contributions of

the East European armed forces to Soviet military

strategy, as well as the use of the members’ terri-

tory, were significant assets. On the other hand,

throughout the Warsaw Pact’s existence, the ulti-

mate reliability and cohesion of its non-Soviet

members in a putative war against NATO remained

in question. In addition, the declining ability of the

East Europeans to contribute to equipment mod-

ernization, especially as their economies deterio-

rated in the late 1970s and 1980s, raised doubts

about the overall quality of the WTO armed forces.

See also: COMMUNIST BLOC; NORTH ATLANTIC TREATY

ORGANIZATION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Herspring, Dale R. (1998). Requiem for an Army: The

Demise of the East German Military. Lanham, MD:

Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.

Johnson, A. Ross; Dean, Robert W.; and Alexiev, Alexan-

der. (1982). East European Military Establishments:

The Warsaw Pact Northern Tier. New York: Crane

Russak.

Jones, Christopher D. (1981). Soviet Influence in Eastern

Europe: Political Autonomy and the Warsaw Pact. New

York: Praeger Publishers.

Michta, Andrew A. (1990). Red Eagle: The Army in Polish

Politics, 1944–1988. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institu-

tion Press.

Nelson, Daniel N. (1986). Alliance Behavior in the War-

saw Pact. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

The Parallel History Project on NATO and the Warsaw

Pact. (2003). <http://www.isn.ethz.ch/php/index

.htm>.

Volgyes, Ivan. (1982). The Political Reliability of the War-

saw Pact Armies: The Southern Tier. Durham, NC:

Duke University Press.

NDREW

A. M

ICHTA

WARSAW TREATY ORGANIZATION

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

WESTERNIZERS

The word Westernizers appeared in Russia at

the turn of the eighteenth century as the antonym

to Easternizers and was used to denote Russian

religious figures who minimized the difference be-

tween Catholicism and Orthodoxy. The Orthodox

Easternizers interpreted the term West as “sunset,”

“decline”; hence for them Westernizers embodied

decline and darkness. In the 1840s, in the course

of a heated discussion held in the Russian press

as well as in St. Petersburg and Moscow literary

salons, Russian thinkers discussed the specific

character of Russian culture, the interrelation of

Russia and Europe, and the further development

of Russia—either with Europe or along its own

special path. Those who advocated rapprochement

between Russia and Western Europe and adoption

of the European way of life were called Western-

izers. Those who defended a nativist course for

Russia’s development were called Slavophiles.

These terms born in polemics were widely used in

the press, literature, and everyday language of the

intelligentsia. They were used for the division of

people into allies and opponents. They were also

used to mobilize the public under one banner or

the other. After the 1860s, the term Westernizers

was applied to the representatives of a variety of

ideological trends whose pedigree could be traced

to the Westernizers of the 1840s.

In modern scholarly literature, the term West-

ernizers is used in both a broad and a narrow sense.

In its broad meaning the term denotes all people of

a pro-Western orientation, irrespective of histori-

cal period, from the ninth century to the present

time who, unlike Slavophiles, regard Russia and

western European countries as indivisible parts of

a united Europe, with common cultural and reli-

gious roots and a common destiny. In the narrow

sense the term is used to denote Westernizers of the

first post-Decembrist generation of the 1830s

through the 1860s, and in this case they are called

classical Westernizers.

Classical Westernizers had European education

and largely belonged to the privileged nobility es-

tate and intellectual elite—publicists, literary men,

scientists, and university professors. In St. Peters-

burg of the late 1840s, some of them formed a

group known to society as the Party of St. Peters-

burg Progress, which mainly consisted of young

officials.

The philosophical views of Westernizers were

formed under the influence of Western enlighten-

ers and philosophers such as Georg Hegel, Johann

Herder, Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Schelling, Jo-

hann Fichte, and Auguste Comte. As a way of

thinking, Westernism was based on the recognition

of the leading role of human intellect. Intellect

pushed back faith, offering an opportunity to con-

ceive of the world (including the world of social re-

lations) as a system of cause-and-effect relations,

governed according to laws common to animate

and inanimate nature. The historical views of West-

ernizers were largely derived from the contempo-

rary western European scholars Henry Buckle,

François Guizot, Barthold Niebuhr, Leopold Ranke,

and Auguste Thierry. Westernizers perceived his-

torical process as the progress of society, a chain

of irreversible qualitative changes from worse to

better. They asserted the value of the human being

as the carrier of intellect. They opposed individual-

ism to traditional social corporatism (korpora-

tivnost) and defined a just society as one that

held all the conditions for the existence and self-

realization of the individual.

The views of the Westernizers cannot be con-

tained in a single work or document because these

views had numerous shades and peculiarities.

Some views differed substantially. As early as the

1840s two trends took shape among Westerniz-

ers: a radical one (A. I. Gertzen and N. P. Ogarev

were its brightest representatives) and a liberal one

comprising the overwhelming majority of West-

ernizers. Representatives of the first trend were not

numerous. Some lived as emigrants and justified

the use of violence for changing the existing po-

litical system. Representatives of the second trend

were advocates of peaceful reforms. They advised

bringing the pressure of the public opinion upon

the government and spreading their views in soci-

ety through education and science. Despite differ-

ences, however, the Westernizers’ sociopolitical,

philosophical, and historical views shared common

features. They denounced serfdom and put for-

ward plans for its abolition. They demonstrated

the advantages of hired over serf labor. They crit-

icized censorship, the absence of legal rights, and

persecutions on ethnic and religious grounds. They

contrasted the Russian autocratic system with the

constitutional orders of western European coun-

tries, especially those of England and France. They

advocated civil rights, democracy, and representa-

tive government. They called for a speedy devel-

opment of industry, commerce, and railways, and

WESTERNIZERS

1663

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

supported the replacement of protectionism with

a free-trade economic policy. Nevertheless, many

Westernizers maintained a critical attitude toward

the sociopolitical system of western European

countries, which they regarded as a point of ref-

erence and not an ideal for blind imitation.

During the reign of Nicholas I, when practical

political activities outside the frame of official ide-

ology were impossible, Westernism was a purely

ideological trend. Under Alexander II, Westernizers

seized new opportunities for practical work: They

played an active role in the preparation and imple-

mentation of the Great Reforms of the 1860s and

early 1870s. In the post-reform era, Westernism

provided the theoretical basis for the politics of lib-

eralism. It also became the ideology of radical the-

ories, which promoted ideas for changing an unjust

society, based on belief in the value of the individ-

ual and the inadequacy of the official Orthodox re-

ligion.

After 1985 Westernism experienced a rebirth in

Russian social thought. Polemics between support-

ers and opponents of Russia’s rapprochement with

the West continue to rest on arguments first ar-

ticulated by the classical Westernizers and Slavo-

philes.

See also: GREAT REFORMS; INTELLIGENTSIA; SLAVOPHILES;

THICK JOURNALS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Edie, James M.; Scanlan, M. P.; and Zeldin, Mary-Barbara,

eds. (1965). Russian Philosophy, Vol 1: The Beginnings

of Russian Philosophy: The Slavophiles; The Westerniz-

ers. Chicago: Quadrangle Books.

Roosevelt, Priscilla R. (1986). Apostle of Russian Liberal-

ism: Timofey Granovsky. Newtonville, MA: Oriental

Research Partners.

Treadgold, Donald. W. (1973). The West in Russia and

China: Religious and Secular Thought in Modern Times,

Vol. 1: Russia, 1472–1917. New York: Cambridge

University Press.

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

tory of a Conservative Utopia in Nineteenth-Century

Russian Thought, tr. Hilda Andrews-Rusiecka. Ox-

ford: Clarendon.

Walicki, Andrzej. (1979). A History of Russian Thought:

From the Enlightenment to Marxism, tr. Hilda

Andrews-Rusiecka. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univer-

sity Press.

ORIS

N. M

IRONOV

WHAT IS TO BE DONE?

The question “What Is To Be Done?” crystallized

critical issues inherent in the Russian revolution-

ary movement between 1850 and 1917. Specifi-

cally, it defined the focus and direction of the

struggle to reform and modernize Russia’s archaic

political, economic, and social structure of the fif-

teenth and sixteenth centuries, which had subse-

quently given rise to the Russian autocracy and

Russian state. Ultimately, two distinct responses

emerged, generated by Nikolai Gavrilovich Cherny-

shevsky in 1863 and Vladimir Ilich Lenin in 1902.

Interestingly, each was titled “What Is To Be

Done?” Although the works were separated by

forty years, they had much in common.

As a proponent of change in pre-industrial,

populist Russia, Chernyshevsky accepted the peas-

ant obshchina (commune) as the basis for the new

Russia. He believed that the obshchina not only rep-

resented a truly democratic (egalitarian) socialist

society, but also enabled Russia to avoid the evils

of capitalism that existed in European industrial so-

cieties. However, Chernyshevsky insisted that rev-

olution, not gradualism, was necessary for the

transformation of Russia, and even then it could

occur only through the dedicated commitment of

revolutionary activists, which he called the new

revolutionary archetypes.

By 1902 proletarian (Marxian) socialism had

replaced agrarian populism within the Russian rev-

olutionary movement. Faced with a declining so-

cialist revolutionary radicalism, Lenin sought its

revitalization. Like Chernyshevsky, Lenin favored

the overthrow of the tsarist government and re-

jected the economic gradualism (called economism)

of his time. Lenin did more than create a new rev-

olutionary prototype; however, he formulated a

new revolutionary catechism (Bolshevism) for con-

ducting the revolution, one that eventually over-

threw the tsarist government in 1917.

See also: CHERNYSHEVSKY, NIKOLAI GAVRILOVICH; LENIN,

VLADIMIR ILICH

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Tucker, Robert C., ed. (1975). The Lenin Anthology. New

York: Norton.

Venturi, Franco. (1966). The Roots of Revolution: A His-

tory of the Populist and Socialist Movements in Nine-

teenth Century Russia. New York: Grosset’s Universal

Library.

AVID

K. M

UILKIN

WHAT IS TO BE DONE?

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY