Encyclopedia of Russian History

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WHITE ARMY

Within weeks of the October 1917 Revolution,

thousands of tsarist officers and supporters of the

Provisional Government began armed resistance

against the new regime. The Bolsheviks, who saw

the anticommunists as more united than they ac-

tually were, named these men “White,” a term

taken from the reactionary forces during the French

Revolution (the communist forces against which

the Whites fought were called the Reds). There

were, in fact, many disparate White armies, each

under its own commander and with its own ob-

jectives. They lacked a central authority to coordi-

nate action or policies on the far-flung battlefields

of the Civil War. Politically they were just as di-

vided because some White officers were monar-

chists while others wanted re-establishment of the

Provisional Government. In the end the White

armies were bound only by a common hatred of

the communists and a shared desire to retain the

old borders of the Russian Empire.

The lack of unity among the White armies was

but one of the reasons for their defeat. When they

were successful on the battlefield, the Allied pow-

ers (Britain, France, and the United States) provided

critical military assistance, but as the Whites be-

gan to lose, the aid disappeared, consigning the

Whites to their fate. The fluid nature of the civil

war also meant that the Whites never created per-

manent institutions. Matters were not helped by

the officers’ reluctance to involve themselves in po-

litical matters, leaving chaos and banditry to reign

in much of their territory. Thus, although it was

not deliberate policy, White troops were allowed to

commit atrocities during the war, such as pogroms

against the Jews who lived in White-occupied

lands. None of this endeared Whites to the popu-

lation. Most devastating for the Whites was a

paucity of new solutions to the problems that their

country faced and a consequent inability to rally

ordinary Russians and other nationalities to their

cause.

The best known of the White armies were those

led by Anton Denikin, Alexander Kolchak, and

Nikolai Yudenich. Large Cossack units also fought

alongside several of the White armies. One of the

first anticommunist forces was the Volunteer

Army, commanded first by Mikhail Alekseev and

then Lavr Kornilov. When Kornilov was killed in

battle, Denikin took command and led an offensive

that came within 300 kilometers (186.4 miles) of

Moscow. The Red Army, with twice as many men

and strong cavalry units under Semeon Budenny,

stopped him and forced the Volunteer Army into

headlong retreat. Denikin resigned and was replaced

by Peter Wrangel, whose counteroffensive was also

pushed back. The tattered remnants of the Volun-

teer Army were evacuated from the Crimea in

March 1920.

Denikin never coordinated his attacks with

Kolchak’s forces, which in 1919 made spectacular

gains against the Bolsheviks in eastern Russia.

Kolchak claimed to represent the legitimate au-

thority of Russia, but when Red units led by

Mikhail Tukhachevsky defeated his men (including

Siberian and Western armies), his bid to win the

recognition of the Allied powers was doomed. Yu-

denich meanwhile tried and failed to capture Pet-

rograd with his Northern (later “Northwestern”)

Army. The collapse of their armies forced most

White officers into exile in Germany and Paris,

where they would plot their return to Russia for

the next seventy years.

See also: CIVIL WAR OF 1917–1922; COSSACKS; DENIKIN,

ANTON IVANOVICH; KOLCHAK, ALEXANDER VASILIE-

VICH; YUDENICH, NIKOLAI NIKOLAYEVICH

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Lincoln, Bruce. (1989). Red Victory. A History of the Russ-

ian Civil War. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Luckett, Richard. (1971). White Generals. An Account of

the White Movement and the Russian Civil War. New

York: Viking Press.

Mawdsley, Evan. (1987). The Russian Civil War. Boston:

Allen & Unwin.

Wade, Rex A. (2001). The Bolshevik Revolution and Russ-

ian Civil War. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

ARY

R. H

ABECK

WHITE MOVEMENT See CIVIL WAR OF 1917–1922;

WHITE ARMY.

WHITE SEA CANAL

The White Sea (Belomor) Canal in Karelia rises from

Lake Onega in the south to a maximum of 108

meters (118.1 feet) at Lake Vyg and then descends

to the White Sea in the north. The canal, which

is 227 kilometers (141.1 miles) long (including

thirty-seven artificially constructed waterways,

nineteen locks, fifteen dams, and forty-nine dikes),

WHITE SEA CANAL

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was constructed in twenty months (November

1931–July 1933) by more than 100,000 gulag

prisoners using local natural resources (rock, peat,

dirt, timber), an endless supply of slave labor, and

primitive tools (pickaxes, wheelbarrows, shovels,

horses, and wooden pulleys). Because the shipping

season is limited to six months and the canal is of-

ten shallow and narrow, traffic consists mainly of

barges and small passenger or cargo vessels.

Contemplated since the sixteenth century and

constructed under Josef V. Stalin, the canal short-

ened the journey from Leningrad to Arkhangelsk

from twenty days to eight. Originally a secret mil-

itary project, it was designed to enable northern

troops and supply transports and sea access should

Leningrad face a Baltic blockade. Economically, the

canal was intended to exploit Karelia’s natural re-

sources. Politically, it was a signature forced-labor,

large construction project of the first Five-Year

Plan. The government promoted the waterway

as emblematic of Soviet power and Stalinist ideol-

ogy, and as exemplifying reforging, the process

through which hard labor re-education programs,

supervised by the secret police, remade common

criminals and political prisoners into model Soviet

citizens. Many reforged workers perished during

the construction of the canal; the survivors were

transferred to the Moscow-Volga Canal project or

freed. The White Sea Canal embodies the excesses

of Stalinism and immortalizes the thousands who

died there.

See also: FIVE-YEAR PLANS; GULAG

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Baron, Nick. (2001). “Conflict and Complicity: The Ex-

pansion of the Karelian Gulag, 1923–1933.” Cahiers

du Monde Russe 42:615-648.

Ruder, Cynthia A. (1998). Making History for Stalin: The

Story of the Belomor Canal. Gainesville: University

Press of Florida.

YNTHIA

A. R

UDER

WINIUS, ANDRIES DIONYSZOON

(1605–1662), merchant and factory owner.

Known in Russia as Andrei Denisovich Vinius,

Andries Winius was born in Amsterdam in 1605

and died in Russia in 1662. His parents were Diony-

sius Tjerckszoon Winius and Maritgen Andries-

dochter Vekemans. He married Geertruyd van Rijn

in 1628 and had three children: Andreas, Maria,

and Matthias.

Winius began to trade in Russia in 1627. He

was granted a patent (zhalovannaya gramota) for

trade in the Russian interior in 1631 and exported

100,000 chetverti of Treasury grain the same year.

In 1632 Winius, together with his brother Abra-

ham and his partner Julius Willeken, were autho-

rized to build an iron mill in the Tula district. The

partners admitted Peter Marselis and Thomas de

Swaen to their company and were given a ten-year

monopoly on iron and weapons production. The

water-driven Tula works was the first industrial

iron producer in Russia.

Following a petition, Winius received a new

patent in 1634 for trade, with improved conditions,

and was appointed gost (privileged merchant). In

the same year, Winius moved with his family to

Moscow. The Tula partnership appears to have dis-

integrated by 1638; in 1639 Winius and Marselis,

together with Thielman Akkema, became the hold-

ers of the charter of privilege. The new arrange-

ment lasted until 1647, by which time a serious

conflict arose between Winius and his partners. In

1648 Marselis and Akkema took control of the

ironworks. Winius, in contrast, withdrew from

iron production altogether. The same year, he pe-

titioned to become a Russian subject. As compen-

sation for his losses in Tula, Winius was granted

a monopoly on tar production and trade, which he

held between 1649 and 1654. He enjoyed the ex-

clusive right to produce tar in the Northern Dvina

and Sukhona valleys.

In 1652 Winius and his second wife, Gertrud

Meyer (married in 1648), converted to Orthodoxy

and became Russian subjects. In 1653 Winius and

Ivan Yeremeyev Marsov were dispatched by the

tsar to the Netherlands to acquire weapons, muni-

tions, and woollen cloth for uniforms, as well as

to hire military officers for service in the Muscovite

army. They sold Treasury grain and potash to fi-

nance these purchases. Winius returned to Russia

in 1654. He served as a diplomatic representative

of the Russian government in the Netherlands,

Italy, and Germany.

Winius’s eldest son Andreas (known as Andrei

Andreyevich Vinius) served as an interpreter at the

Diplomatic Chancellery as of 1664. He was sent to

France, Spain, and England for diplomatic service

from 1672 to 1674. He served in the Apothecary

Chancellery from 1677 to 1689. He was ennobled

WINIUS, ANDRIES DIONYSZOON

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

in 1685 and headed the diplomatic postal service

thereafter. Deputy head of the Diplomatic Chan-

cellery from 1689 to 1695, he was appointed Duma

Secretary in 1695. He headed the Siberian Chan-

cellery from 1697 to 1703 and the Artillery Chan-

cellery as of 1701, and built iron mills on the Urals.

He was dismissed from government service in 1703

for embezzlement and delay in supplying the army.

He escaped to the Netherlands in 1706 but, par-

doned by Peter I, returned to Russia in 1708. He

translated foreign books about military matters

and technology and was an important bibliophile

and art collector. He died in 1717.

See also: FOREIGN TRADE; GOSTI; MERCHANTS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fuhrmann, Joseph T. (1972). The Origins of Capitalism in

Russia: Industry and Progress in the Sixteenth and Sev-

enteenth Centuries. Chicago: Quadrangle Books.

ARMO

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OTILAINE

WINTER PALACE

The institution of the Winter Palace dates from the

first decade of St. Petersburg’s existence, when the

first Winter House was constructed for Peter I in

1711. With the transfer of the capital from

Moscow in 1712, the winter residence of the tsar-

emperor acquired the status of a major state build-

ing. The next Winter Palace was built on the

Neva River embankment in 1716–1719 to a plan

by Georg Mattarnovi and was expanded in the

1720s by Domenico Trezzini. In 1732 Bartolomeo

Francesco Rastrelli began work at the command of

Empress Anna on a third version of the Winter

Palace, which was under construction for much of

the 1730s.

The planning of a new Winter Palace for Em-

press Elizabeth began in the early 1750s under the

direction of Rastrelli, who intended to incorporate

the existing third Winter Palace into the design of

a still larger structure. However, as work proceeded

in 1754, he concluded that the new palace would

require not simply an expansion of the old, but

would have to be built over its foundations. Con-

struction continued year round despite the severe

winters, and the empress—who viewed the palace

as a matter of state prestige during the Seven Years’

War (1756–1763)—continued to issue orders for

its rapid completion. The 859,555 rubles originally

allotted for construction of the Winter Palace were

to be drawn, in a scheme devised by the courtier

Pyotr Shuvalov, from the revenues of state-licensed

taverns. (Most of Rastrelli’s army of laborers earned

a monthly wage of one ruble.) Cost overruns were

chronic, and work was occasionally halted for lack

of materials and money at a time when Russia’s

resources were strained to the limit by the Seven

Years’ War. Ultimately the project cost some

2,500,000 rubles, drawn from alcohol and salt

taxes placed on an already burdened population.

Elizabeth did not live to see the completion of the

palace: She died on December 25, 1761. The main

state rooms and imperial apartments were ready

the following year for Tsar Peter III and his wife

Catherine.

The basic plan of the Winter Palace consists of

a quadrilateral with an interior courtyard decorated

in a manner similar to the outer walls. The exte-

rior facades of the new imperial palace—three of

which are turned toward public spaces—were dec-

orated in a late baroque style. On the Neva River

facade the palace presents, from a distance, an un-

interrupted horizontal sweep of more than 200 me-

ters, while the opposite facade (on Palace Square)

is marked in the center by the three arches of the

main courtyard entrance—immortalized by the film

director Sergei Eisenstein as well as by artists who

portrayed, in exaggerated form, the “storming of

the Winter Palace.” The facade overlooking the Ad-

miralty is the one area of the structure that con-

tains substantial elements of the third Winter

Palace.

A strict symmetry reigns over the facades. Two

hundred fifty columns segment some seven hun-

dred windows, not including those of the interior

court. The palace has three main floors situated

over a basement level, and the structure culminates

in an elaborate cornice supporting 176 large orna-

mental vases and allegorical statues. The original

stone statuary, corroded by Petersburg’s harsh cli-

mate, was replaced in the 1890s by copper figures.

The sandy color that Rastrelli intended for the

stucco facade has vanished under a series of paints

ranging from dull red (applied in the late nineteenth

century) to turquoise in the early twenty-first cen-

tury.

The interior of the Winter Palace, with its more

than seven hundred rooms, has undergone many

changes, and little of Rastrelli’s rococo decoration

has survived. Work on the interior continued

for several decades, as rooms were changed and

WINTER PALACE

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

refitted to suit the tastes of Catherine the Great and

her successors. Still more damaging was the 1837

palace fire that burned unchecked for more than

two days and destroyed the interior. During the re-

construction most of the rooms were decorated in

eclectic styles of the mid-nineteenth century or re-

stored to the neoclassical style used by Rastrelli’s

successors in decorating the palace, such as Gia-

como Quarenghi. Only the main, or Jordan, stair-

case and the corridor leading to it (the Rastrelli

Gallery) were restored by Vasily Stasov in a man-

ner close to Rastrelli’s original design. Yet the Win-

ter Palace remains associated above all with the

name of Rastrelli, the creator of this baroque mas-

terpiece.

In 1918 the Winter Palace and its art collection

were nationalized, and in 1922 most of the build-

ing became part of the State Hermitage Museum.

Substantial restoration work was interrupted by

the outbreak of war, during which the museum

staff performed heroically. The State Hermitage

Museum reopened in 1945, and since that time the

former Winter Palace has become the object of

scrupulous preservation efforts devoted to one of

the world’s greatest museums.

WINTER PALACE

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

The Marshals’ Salon displays the ornate decor typical of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. T

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EPRODUCED BY PERMISSION

See also: ELIZABETH; FRENCH INFLUENCE IN RUSSIA; MU-

SEUM, HERMITAGE; RASTRELLI, BARTOLOMEO; ST. PE-

TERSBURG

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brumfield, William Craft. (1993). A History of Russian

Architecture. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Orloff, Alexander, and Shvidkovsky, Dmitri. (1996). St.

Petersburg: Architecture of the Tsars. New York:

Abbeville Press.

ILLIAM

RAFT

RUMFIELD

WITCHCRAFT

Russian witchcraft is best seen as a remnant of East

Slavic, pre-Christian, pagan practices, elements of

which survived into modern times. The earliest

written record that mentions witchcraft dates to

1024 and appears in a chronicle describing the ex-

ecution of sorcerers in Suzdal. Literary sources con-

tinued to speak of sorcery in later centuries and, in

most cases, were connected to allegations of witch-

craft causing inclement weather, droughts, crop

failure, and other phenomena that resulted in

famine and pestilence.

During the Kievan era (roughly 900 to 1240)

the most common form of popular (extralegal)

witch trial appears to have been ordeal by cold wa-

ter and execution by burning at the stake. As early

as the second half of the eleventh century, how-

ever, Rus princes granted the Church official au-

thority over witchcraft trials. Contrary to the

Byzantine canonical practice of executing suspected

witches, the Rus princes established relatively nom-

inal monetary penalties for practicing sorcery. De-

spite this, unofficial persecutions of sorcerers

continued to take place on occasion.

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Mus-

covy saw a marked increase in the preoccupation

with witchcraft. With the 1551 Stoglav Council

headed by Ivan IV (1533–1584), the Muscovite

government and church took an active interest in

battling witchcraft. The council recommended that

the state impose the death penalty for sorcerers,

and that the church excommunicate such offend-

ers. Ivan IV’s Decree of 1552, while disregarding

the recommendation of imposing the death penalty,

transferred witch trials to state jurisdiction, thereby

transforming witchcraft into a civil offence. This

formed the background for the use of allegations

of criminal witchcraft for political purposes. Dur-

ing the reign of Ivan IV, and more so through the

subsequent Time of Troubles, the Muscovite ruling

elite invoked charges of witchcraft to persecute

their political enemies, both at court and outside of

Moscow.

Witchcraft trials saw their heyday during the

seventeenth century, when the death penalty came

to be systematically applied to the guilty. However,

the Muscovite witch hunts were much smaller in

scale than those that were occurring in contempo-

rary communities of Western Europe. Although the

tsars sent directives to the provinces to fight sor-

cery until 1682, the orders were not systematic and

organized, nor were the persecutions. This, in large

part, is because of the deep-rooted dvoeverie (dual-

faith, the holding of conflicting belief systems)

among most Russians, including the ruling elite,

who had ambivalent views toward remnants of pa-

gan practices. Also, unlike in the West, where much

of the “witch craze” was directed against women,

the Muscovite “witch scare” charged a proportional

number of men (warlocks) with sorcery. This was

probably connected to the occupation of the ac-

cused—unlike in the West, Muscovy men often

acted as herbalists and village healers, which were

professions commonly associated with witchcraft.

During the reign of Catherine II (1762–1796),

the death penalty for witchcraft was abolished and

the crime lowered to the level of fraud. In 1775 she

transferred cases dealing with witchcraft to courts

handling such affairs as popular superstition, juve-

nile crimes, and the criminally insane. Sorcery, how-

ever, persisted among the East Slavic peasants into

the nineteenth century, in large part because of their

continued use of charms, spells, potions, and herbs

in folk medicine.

See also: IVAN IV; KIEVAN RUS; TIME OF TROUBLES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Zguta, Russell. (1977). “Witchcraft Trials in Seven-

teenth-Century Russia.” The American Historical Re-

view 82(5):1187–1207.

Zguta, Russell. (1978). “Witchcraft and Medicine in Pre-

Petrine Russia.” The Russian Review 37(4):438–448.

OMAN

K. K

OVALEV

WITTE, SERGEI YULIEVICH

(1849–1915), minister of communication (1892);

minister of finance (1892–1903); chairman of the

WITTE, SERGEI YULIEVICH

1669

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

Committee of Ministers (1903–1905); prime min-

ister (1905–1906); responsible for program of in-

dustrialization and political reforms.

Sergei Witte descended from russified Lutheran

Germans on his father’s side and from Russian no-

bility on his mother’s side. He was born in Tbilisi.

In 1865 he finished a Tbilisi gymnasium and in

1870 graduated from the Department of Physics

and Mathematics at Novorossysk University

(Odessa). He dreamt of an academic career, but on

his relatives’ insistence he entered the state service

on the Odessa Railway. In 1877 Witte moved to

the privately owned Society of Southwestern Rail-

ways and there made a brilliant career, soon be-

coming its manager. In 1883 he published a book

The Principles of Railway Tariffs for the Transporta-

tion of Goods, which earned him renown as a rail-

way expert.

In the 1870s Witte fell under the sway of

Slavophile ideas. He took a great interest in the

theological writings of Alexei Khomyakov and par-

ticipated in activities of the Odessa Slavic Philan-

thropic Society. Here he became a friend to Mikhail

Katkov, an influential right-wing journalist. Witte

also published feuilletons under a pen name. In 1881

and 1882 he participated in the pro-monarchist se-

cret aristocratic society Svyataya Druzhina (The

Holy Retinue) organized on Witte’s advice by his

uncle General Rostislav Fadeyev, a well-known mil-

itary historian and publicist of Slavophile views. In

1882 the society was liquidated.

In 1887 Witte was appointed director of the

Railway Department of the Ministry of Finance. In

1892 he advanced to the post of minister for rail-

ways and then to minister of finance. Witte soon

became the most influential minister in the gov-

ernment, and his ministry the center of the entire

state government. Witte proved to be an out-

standing politician, capable of getting his bearings

in the most complicated situations, designing long-

term programs, and then carrying them out effec-

tively. Soon Witte gave up his Slavophile views and

turned into a modernizer of the European type. He

sought to accelerate the industrial development of

Russia with the aid of state support and foreign

capital. He contended that Russia would catch up

with advanced Western countries industrially

within a decade and would secure a strong posi-

tion for Russian manufactured goods in the mar-

kets of the Near, Middle, and Far East.

The program of industrialization, “the Witte

system,” as he called it, included (1) intensive rail-

way building; (2) protectionism and state subsidies

for private entrepreneurs; and (3) a great influx of

foreign capital to industry, banks, and state loans.

Never before in Russia had state economic interven-

tion been used so widely and effectively. The state

acted by purely economic means through the state

bank and institutions of the Ministry of Finance,

which monitored the activities of joint-stock com-

mercial banks. In order to penetrate the markets of

China, Mongolia, Korea, and Persia, the Ministry of

Finance founded the Russo-Chinese, Russo-Korean,

and Loan and Discount Banks. Witte’s program

achieved the desired results. In the period from 1892

to 1902, state finances were strengthened, foreign

investment capital poured in (over 3 billion rubles

or 1.544 billion dollars), and a stable monetary sys-

tem was formed. The highest rates of economic de-

velopment in Europe were attained (from 1883 to

1904 the volume of industrial output increased 2.7

times, or 6% per year). The annual growth rate of

the national income averaged nearly 3.5 percent. The

intensive economic development of Russia was ac-

companied by the improvement of the living stan-

WITTE, SERGEI YULIEVICH

1670

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

Sergei Witte, a gifted Russian statesman, drafted the 1905

October Manifesto. T

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dards of the broad masses of the population, as data

on the increase in the height of recruits testify.

After setting industry on its feet and ensuring

its self-development, Witte planned to carry

through an agrarian reform. His attempts, how-

ever, met fierce resistance of conservatives. He was

able only to simplify passport rules and abolish the

rules on shared responsibility for taxes and other

obligations laid on the peasants. The other aspects

of the agrarian program designed by Witte were

later introduced by his successor, Petr Stolypin.

Although Witte was transferred to the less in-

fluential post of Chairman of the Committee of

Ministers in August 1903, the deteriorating polit-

ical situation in the country, caused by Russian de-

feat in the Russo-Japanese War, and the insistence

of public opinion brought him back to active ser-

vice in the summer of 1904. Witte led the Russian

delegation that concluded peace with Japan in the

Treaty of Portsmouth. He then participated in

preparing the October Manifesto of 1905, in which

the emperor granted civil freedom. Witte took the

post of prime minister in the new government and

ran political affairs in a European style. He paid at-

tention to public opinion, regarded the Russian and

foreign presses as representative of public opinion,

and exerted influence upon the public through the

press. His government introduced the political

rights granted by the October Manifesto, worked

to appease the population and win it over to the

government’s side, curbed punitive excesses and

pogroms, and conducted the elections to the Duma.

Witte’s activities, however, received criticism from

all sides. The emperor viewed him as a rival in in-

fluence and popularity. The wealthy were disap-

pointed in the Duma elections, whose results

proved unfavorable for them. Revolutionaries

cursed Witte for his repressive measures. Liberals

censured him for his defense of the monarchical

prerogatives in the Basic Laws and his other con-

cessions to rightists. Conservatives were dissatis-

fied with Witte’s participation in the demolition of

the old political system and transition to a new one.

After Witte had concluded the Portsmouth Peace

Treaty with Japan, brought troops from the Far

East back to European Russia, restored public or-

der in the country, prepared the Basic Laws, orga-

nized elections to the Duma, and secured a big loan

in Europe (843.75 million rubles or 434.16 million

dollars) that brought stability to government fi-

nances, he was forced to resign.

Until his final days Witte hoped to return to

power. In order not to be forgotten, he used all

means available to him: the rostrum of the State

Council, the press, intrigues, and connections in the

West. Witte died in 1915 at the age of 66, his health

undermined by hard work and forebodings. He op-

posed Russia’s participation in World War I and

predicted grave consequences similar to the up-

heavals that occurred after the Russo-Japanese

War.

See also: ECONOMY, IMPERIAL; INDUSTRIALIZATION; OC-

TOBER MANIFESTO; PORTSMOUTH, TREATY OF; RAIL-

WAYS; TRANS-SIBERIAN RAILWAY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Gindin, I. F. (1972). “Russia’s Industrialization under

Capitalism as Seen by Theodore von Laue.” Soviet

Studies in History 11(1):3-55.

Gurko, Vladimir Iosifovich. (1939). Features and Figures

of the Past: Government and Opinion in the Reign of

Nicholas II. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Judge, Edward. (1983). Plehve: Repression and Reform in

Imperial Russia, 1902–1904. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse

University Press.

Kokovtsov, Vladimir Nikolaevich. (1935). Out of My Past:

The Memoirs of Count Kokovtsov, Russian Minister of

Finance, 1904–1914, Chairman of the Council of Min-

isters, 1911–1914, ed. H. H. Fisher; tr. Laura Matveev.

Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Laue, Theodore von. (1963). Sergei Witte and the Indus-

trialization of Russia. New York: Columbia Univer-

sity Press.

Mehlinger, Howard, and Thompson, John. (1972). Count

Witte and the Tsarist Government in the 1905 Revolu-

tion. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Weissman, Neil B. (1981). Reform in Tsarist Russia: The

State Bureaucracy and Local Government, 1900–1914.

New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Weissman, Neil B. (1987). “Witte, Sergei Iul’evich.” The

Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History

44:9–14. Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International

Press.

Witte, Sergei. (1921). The Memoirs of Count Witte, tr.

Abraham Yarmolinsky. London: Heinemann.

ORIS

N. M

IRONOV

WOMEN OF RUSSIA BLOC

Women of Russia (Zhenshchiny Rossii, or ZhR) was

formed as a political movement on the eve of the

1993 Duma elections. It contained the Union

of Russia’s Women (formerly the Committee of

WOMEN OF RUSSIA BLOC

1671

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

Soviet Women), Association of Russia’s Women

Entrepreneurs, and the Union of Women of the

Navy. The movement was headed by Alevtina Fed-

ulova, leader of the Union of Women; Yekaterina

Lakhova, adviser to Boris Yeltsin on matters of

family, childbearing, and children; and the popu-

lar actress Natalia Gundareva, and received 4.4

million votes (8.1%, or fourth place) and twenty-

one Duma seats in 1993. The success was due to

the amorphousness of the political scene, where the

lack of parties and transience of elections made a

good flag sufficient. In the Duma, the ZhR faction,

which was called the first of its kind in the history

of world parliamentism, basically supported the

government and did not distinguish itself in any

way. At the beginning of the 1995 campaign, ZhR

was regarded as a potential participant in a broad

left-centrist coalition, but it chose to enter inde-

pendently. In the end it did not attain the 5 per-

cent threshold required to merit proportional

representation, winning 3.2 million votes (4.6%,

fifth place); three candidates, including Lakhova,

were elected in single-mandate districts. At the

time, incidentally, most electoral associations in-

cluded their women candidates in the top three

places on the lists.

In 1997, Lakhova, leaving ZhR, founded her

own Sociopolitical Movement of Russia’s Women

(OPDZh). In the beginning of the 1999 campaign,

both Fedulova of ZhR and Lakhova of OPDZh en-

tered Yuri Luzhkov’s Fatherland, then the bloc Fa-

therland-All Russia (OVR). After Lakhova was

included in the central part of the OVR list, and

Fedulova was not, ZhR announced its departure

from the bloc, with the explanation that OVR, in

assembling its list, had demonstrated its traditional,

conservative approach to women’s role in society.

The ZhR results (2.0%, eighth place) were much

lower than expected, partly because “women” di-

verged: some stayed in the OVR; in addition, ZhR

had a double, the Russian Party for the Defense of

Women (0.8%). Moreover, social problematics fun-

damental to ZhR were actively exploited by more

powerful electoral associations: the Communist

Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) and OVR.

On the threshold of the 2003 elections, a paradox-

ical situation arose, when Fedulova’s virtual ZhR,

having met for the last time in an all-Russian con-

ference in the summer of 1999, and not having

shown a sign of existence since that time, gathered

4 to 7 percent support in a social referendum.

Lakhova’s OPDZh, having dissolved into United

Russia, tried to resurface politically, entering the

April 2003 elections with the somewhat vague bill

“concerning governmental guarantees of equal

rights and freedoms of men and women and equal

opportunities for their realization.”

See also: CONSTITUTION OF 1993; FATHERLAND-ALL RUS-

SIA; FEMINISM

BIBLIOGRAPHY

McFaul, Michael. (2001). Russia’s Unfinished Revolution:

Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin. Ithaca, NY:

Cornell University Press.

McFaul, Michael, and Markov, Sergei. (1993). The Trou-

bled Birth of Russian Democracy: Parties, Personalities,

and Programs. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution

Press.

McFaul, Michael, and Petrov, Nikolai, eds. (1995). Pre-

viewing Russia’s 1995 Parliamentary Elections. Wash-

ington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International

Peace.

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

of Russia’s Reforms: Market Bolshevism against Democ-

racry. Washington, DC: U.S. Institute of Peace Press.

Remington, Thomas. (2002). Politics in Russia, 2nd ed.

New York: Longman.

IKOLAI

ETROV

WOMEN’S DEPARTMENT See ZHENOTDEL.

WORKERS

In the general sense of the term, there have of

course been workers present since the dawn of

Russian history, including slave laborers and serfs.

Viewed more narrowly to mean persons employed

in industry and paid a wage, however, workers be-

came important to the Russian economy only in

the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, es-

pecially during the reign of Peter the Great

(1682–1725), who placed a high priority on Rus-

sia’s industrial development. But even under Peter

most workers employed in manufacturing and

mining were unfree labor, forced to toil long hours

either in privately owned enterprises or in factories

owned by the government. The continued coexis-

tence of free and forced labor at a time when forced

labor, except for convicts, had virtually vanished

from the European scene was a noteworthy and

notorious characteristic of Russian society until as

late as 1861, when serfdom was abolished and al-

most all labor was placed on a contractual footing.

WOMEN’S DEPARTMENT

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With the abolition of serfdom, Russia began a

new spurt of industrial development. In the 1890s

Russian industry expanded rapidly, growing at an

average rate of 8 percent per annum. The number

of industrial workers, if viewed as a percentage of

the overall population, was still small by the end

of that decade; according to the 1897 census, the

Empire’s population was over 125 million, while

the number of workers was roughly two million.

However, their social and political importance be-

came increasingly evident, in part because of their

concentration in politically sensitive areas such as

St. Petersburg (the capital), Moscow, the port city

of Baku, and the industrial regions of Russian-oc-

cupied Poland.

The most dramatic manifestation of the work-

ers’ importance was their participation in strikes

and demonstrations. If strike is loosely understood

as any work stoppage in defiance of management,

then strikes certainly took place in the eighteenth

and early nineteenth centuries, but they began to

be taken seriously by Russian officials, publicists,

and political activists only in the 1870s and espe-

cially the 1890s. By the early twentieth century a

fierce and sometimes agonizing competition had

begun between radicals of various persuasions

(Social-Democrats, Socialist Revolutionaries, etc.),

liberals, religious organizations, and the govern-

ment for working-class political support. In the

1905 Revolution, radicals emerged as the clear win-

ners in this competition, though with no single fac-

tion dominating. At least in major urban industrial

centers, workers played the leading role in the rev-

olutionary struggles of that year. Their moment of

greatest triumph came with the October general

strike and the creation of citywide workers’ coun-

cils (soviets), one of which virtually became the

governing body of the city of St. Petersburg. How-

ever, the bloody suppression of the armed uprising

of Moscow workers in December 1905 marked the

end of the workers’ triumphant period. Although

labor unrest continued in 1906, workers ceased to

pose a serious threat to the Russian government

until the labor movement revived in the period be-

tween 1912 and 1914.

Nevertheless, the 1905 Revolution did bear

some fruit for Russia’s workers, including the gov-

ernment’s recognition for the first time of their

right to form unions and engage in strikes (albeit

within very tight restrictions) and the right to elect

their own delegates to the new Russian Parliament,

the Duma (albeit under a very restricted franchise).

Russian industry soon began to recover from the

setbacks it had undergone in the first few years of

the century, and by 1910 was again experiencing

a robust expansion. As the position of workers in

the labor market became more favorable, workers

grew less and less tolerant of management mis-

conduct and government repression. A government

massacre of Russian goldminers in the spring of

1912 resuscitated the dormant labor movement

and ushered in a two-year period of militant strike

activity and demonstrations in many parts of Rus-

sia, most dramatically in St. Petersburg and, in

1914, Baku. Politically, this worker militancy

worked to the tactical advantage of the Bolsheviks

and, to a lesser extent, the Socialist Revolutionar-

ies, while working to the disadvantage of the more

moderate Mensheviks, who feared that workers’

passions had been aroused to a degree that could

prove counterproductive. Some historians have ar-

gued that Russian industrial centers were on the

cusp of a new revolution when the onset of World

War I, in the summer of 1914, put a temporary

damper on worker unrest. However, it must also

be acknowledged that the labor movement was dy-

ing down before war was declared.

Be that as it may, once the war began to go

badly for Russia, there were growing signs of a re-

vival of the labor movement, especially in 1916.

By late February 1917, St. Petersburg workers

(women textile workers as well as the traditionally

militant, mainly male, metal and munitions work-

ers) were joining with other elements of the urban

population, including the military garrison, in in-

creasingly confrontational demonstrations. Work-

ers now played a prominent role in the overthrow

of the tsarist regime and, in cooperation with the

radical intelligentsia and their party activists, res-

urrected an updated version of the soviets of 1905,

this time with the crucial participation of soldiers.

Over the next few months, worker militancy in the

form of strikes, street demonstrations, factory oc-

cupations, and participation in the organizations of

the revolutionary parties added enormously to the

difficulties of the new Provisional Government,

which was simply unable to satisfy worker de-

mands under wartime conditions. Hence when the

Bolsheviks succeeded in overthrowing the Provi-

sional Government in October 1917 and dispersing

the recently elected Constituent Assembly the fol-

lowing January, they would do so with a great

deal of working-class support, though this support

was not for Bolshevik single-party rule but for a

soviet government consisting of a coalition of left

parties and supportive of worker democracy within

the factory. The ensuing Civil War of 1917–1921

WORKERS

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was a period of bloodshed, hunger, and, eventu-

ally, draconian measures such as the militarization

of labor and the introduction of strict one-man

management, inflicted by a relentless Bolshevik

regime on recalcitrant workers. Though indispens-

able to the Reds in their struggle against the Whites

in these years of civil war, workers emerged from

the war demoralized and, in many cases, thanks to

the damage suffered by Russian industry, declassed.

Workers now ceased to be a significant indepen-

dent force in the country’s political life.

See also: CIVIL WAR OF 1917–1922; FEBRUARY REVOLU-

TION; LABOR; OCTOBER GENERAL STRIKE OF 1905; OC-

TOBER REVOLUTION; REVOLUTION OF 1905; SOCIAL

DEMOCRATIC PARTY; UNION OF STRUGGLE FOR THE

EMANCIPATION OF LABOR

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bonnell, Victoria E. (1983). Roots of Rebellion: Workers’

Politics and Organizations in St. Petersburg and

Moscow, 1900–14. Berkeley: University of California

Press.

Haimson, Leopold H. (1964-1965). “The Problem of So-

cial Stability in Urban Russia, 1905–1917.” Slavic

Review 23 (4): 619–642; 24(1):1–22.

Johnson, Robert E. (1979). Peasant and Proletarian: The

Working Class of Moscow in the Late Nineteenth Cen-

tury. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Wildman, Allan K. (1967). The Making of a Workers’ Rev-

olution: Russian Social Democracy, 1891–1903.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Zelnik, Reginald E. (1971). Labor and Society in Tsarist

Russia: The Factory Workers of St. Petersburg,

1855–1870. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Zelnik, Reginald E., ed. and tr. (1986). A Radical Worker

in Tsarist Russia: The Autobiography of Semen

Ivanovich Kanatchikov. Stanford, CA: Stanford Uni-

versity Press.

Zelnik, Reginald E., ed. (1999). Workers and Intelligentsia

in Late Imperial Russia: Realities, Representations, Re-

flections. Research Series, no. 101. Berkeley: Interna-

tional and Area Studies, University of California.

EGINALD

E. Z

ELNIK

WORKERS’ CONTROL

The slogan “workers’ control,” popular among rad-

ical Russian workers during the 1917 Revolution

and the early years of Bolshevik rule, designated a

program that was supposed to lead directly to so-

cialism. The program called for the proletariat to

seize and operate the capitalists’ factories and to

plan and manage production and distribution

throughout Russian industry. The concept had its

roots in nineteenth-century European socialism

and especially in the syndicalist movement, which

espoused economic units organized and run by

workers.

Immediately after the February 1917 Revolu-

tion, demands for workers’ control began to spread

among activist workers in large enterprises. The

slogan attracted growing support in the summer

and fall of 1917 as economic conditions worsened,

real wages fell, and some factories closed, while

workers were locked out of other plants. Several

Bolshevik leaders espoused workers’ control as

early as April 1917, and Lenin, recognizing the slo-

gan’s broad appeal, adopted it as part of the Bol-

shevik platform in June, encouraging its use in

Bolshevik propaganda.

In August, September, and October 1917,

workers seized some factories, and more were taken

over after the Bolsheviks came to power. But faced

with shortages of basic supplies, chaotic markets,

labor absenteeism, and inadequate technical and

managerial know-how, proletarian owners had lit-

tle success in getting factories back into produc-

tion. Lenin soon soured on the practice of workers’

control, and beginning in early 1918 he started

centralizing economic decision-making. He also

called for unitary or one-man management (edi-

nonachalie) in industries and individual enterprises

as well as use of bourgeois specialists—former en-

gineers, technicians, and managers—to help oper-

ate the factories and reenergize the economy.

Although workers’ control was largely dropped, a

faction within the Bolshevik party known as the

Workers’ Opposition campaigned unsuccessfully

during 1919 and 1920 for trade unions to have a

greater role in running the Soviet economy.

See also: EDINONACHALIE; FEBRUARY REVOLUTION; WORK-

ERS’ OPPOSITION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Smith, Stephen A. (1983). Red Petrograd: Revolution in the

Factories, 1917–1918. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-

versity Press.

Wade, Rex. (2000). The Russian Revolution, 1917. Cam-

bridge: Cambridge University Press.

OHN

M. T

HOMPSON

WORKERS’ CONTROL

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