Encyclopedia of Russian History

With the exception of the years under Soviet communism, Orthodoxy has been autocracy’s twin. Historically, the Russian Orthodox Church has successfully resisted attempts to separate church and state and has offered support and justification for autocracy in return. Consequently, the church and state have not welcomed religious diversity or promoted tolerance. Judaism, Catholicism, and other Christian denominations, Islam, and other religious faiths have suffered persecution and restrictions over the years. The Soviet era differed only in than all religions were persecuted in the name of official atheism. The long-term trend has apparently reasserted itself as the growing strength of the Russian Orthodox Church in the post-Soviet years has featured renewed attempts to exclude religious competition.

Territorial expansion has characterized the development of Russia from the earliest days, usually through warfare and hostile partitions. The Great Northern War brought Russia to the Baltic coast, while the wars of the nineteenth century expanded Russia’s power into Central Asia. Expanviii

sion under the tsars included annexing territories occupied by settled peoples, as in Ukraine, Poland, and Finland, and also by nomadic tribes, as in Central Asia, and the Caucuses. The outcome of World War II extended Moscow’s reach into Eastern Europe, and during the Cold War Russia supported regimes in Afghanistan, Cuba, and insurgent movements in Central America and Africa.

The process of empire-building brought more than 120 ethnic and national groups under Russian rule. It was a costly exercise requiring a large standing army. Russification versus promoting local languages and cultures in these territories was a recurring issue under tsars and commissars alike, and it remains an issue today in the Russian Federation. The collapse first of the Soviet empire in East-Central Europe in 1988-1989 and then of the USSR itself in 1991 caused an equivalent contraction in Moscow’s power and undermined the economy as well. Consequently, although Russia’s leaders have sought to maintain and even increase influence in what only Russians call the “near abroad,” that is the former republics of the USSR, the empire has shrunk to its smallest extent since the eighteenth century, and the Russia Federation’s influence in its former republics, not to mention Eastern and Central Europe, has been severely constrained by a lack of funds as well as by local nationalist feelings.

Successful modernization of Europe has been viewed by Russians as either a possible model for Russia’s development or as a threat to her distinctive, peculiar social, political and economic institutions. From Russia’s vantagepoint on the periphery of Europe, to modernize has meant to Westernize, with all the political and economic baggage that that implies. Periodically, Russia’s leaders have opened the “door” to Europe, as Peter the Great put it, only to have it closed or restricted by those who have sought to maintain and foster Russia’s unique civilization and its messianic mission in world history. In one form or another there has been a recurring struggle since the time of Peter the Great between the Slavophiles and the Westernizers, and this was even true during the Soviet era. Lenin and Trotsky and the Old Bolsheviks thought they were opening Russia to a global communist system. Stalin closed it tightly and created an autarkic economy. Nikita Khrushchev, Gorbachev, and Yeltsin opened Russia once again to the West, ultimately with catastrophic consequences for the empire. It has been difficult, however, to overcome the pull of the “Russian idea,” and post-Soviet development policies have been undercut by an ambiguous commitment to democratization and marketiza-tion.

These issues, autocracy, Orthodoxy, territorial expansionism, modernization, and cultural uniqueness, have appeared, disappeared, and reappeared throughout Russian history. Western and Russian historians have argued at length about the strength, significance, and permanence of these themes, and the articles contained in this encyclopedia explore these issues as impartially and objectively as possible.

There is no question, however, about the unique, unparalleled contributions of Russian culture to art, music, literature, philosophy, and science. Where would we be without Glinka, Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Rublev, Mendeleyev, Sakharov and the many, many other artists, thinkers, and scientists that Russia’s citizens of all nationalities have produced? The editors and I hope that the reader will use this encyclopedia to sample the richness of Russian history and be induced to explore Russian culture in depth.

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