Russian History: A Very Short Introduction

Red Army occupies eastern Poland (western Ukraine and Belorussia)

March–May 1940

Katyn mass murder of Poles

June 1940

Annexation of Baltic states

June 1941

Germany invades USSR

August 1942–February 1943

Battle of Stalingrad

1944

Deportation of Caucasian and other peoples

May 1945

Germany surrenders to USSR

1949

Formation of NATO

March 1953

Death of Stalin

1955

Formation of Warsaw Pact

February 1956

20th Party Congress; Khrushchev’s ‘secret speech’

1962

Publication of Solzhenitsyn’s A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

October 1964

Fall of Khrushchev; Brezhnev becomes party leader

1975

Helsinki Final Act

March 1985

Gorbachev becomes General Secretary of CPSU

April 1986

Chernobyl nuclear explosion

1988

Popular Fronts formed in Baltic and elsewhere; beginning of Armenian–Azerbaijani conflict

April 1989

Violent suppression of Tbilisi demonstrations

May 1989

Congress of People’s Deputies in Moscow

November 1989

Fall of Berlin Wall

March 1990

Non-Communist parties legalized

March 1990

Democratic Russia wins seats in RSFSR legislature

March 1990

Lithuania secedes from USSR (followed by Latvia and Estonia)

June 1990

Formation of Russian Communist Party

April 1991

Georgia secedes from USSR

June 1991

Yeltsin elected as President of Russia

August 1991

Emergency Committee coup

December 1991

Dissolution of USSR

1992

Privatization law

September–October 1993

Conflict between Yeltsin and Russian parliament

December 1993

Creation of State Duma

December 1994

Russian army invades Chechnia

September 1999

Start of Second Chechen War

December 1999

Yeltsin resigns as President

March 2000

Putin is elected as President

October 2003

Arrest of Khodorkovsky

March 2008

Medvedev is elected as President

Glossary

artel

workers’ cooperative

Autonomous Republic

in the Soviet administrative hierarchy: a republic one level below the 15 Union Republics

blat

informal exchange of goods and/or services

boyars

leading warriors

Cheka

Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage; security police (1917–22)

CPSU

Communist Party of the Soviet Union

druzhina

squad of armed henchmen

dvorianstvo

nobility

glasnost

openness, transparency

grazhdanstvennost

civic consciousness or spirit

guberniia

province

Gulag

NKVD department which ran prisons and labour camps; the network of prisons and labour camps

iarlyk

Mongol licence to rule

intelligentsia

radical intellectuals

KGB

Committee of State Security; security police (1954–91)

kolkhoz

collective farm

kommunalka

communal apartment

korenizatsiia

indigenization: the policy of promoting non-Russian institutions and cultures

kormlenie

‘feeding’: support in kind for a ruler’s local representative

krugovaia poruka

joint responsibility

lavra

a leading monastery

likbez

liquidation of illiteracy

metropolitan

bishop of a leading city

mir

self-governing local community

narod

people, ethnos

narodnik

populist

NKVD

People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs; security police (1934–46)

nomenklatura

Communist Party appointments system; the ruling class thus generated

obshchestvennost

public opinion; society, as opposed to the state

obshchina

village community

perestroika

political reform (under Gorbachev)

pomeshchik

holder of a pomestie

pomestie

landed estate granted in return for service

pravda

truth, justice

propiska

residence permit

putevki

paid holidays

RSFSR

Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (much the largest of the 15 Union Republics of the USSR)

Rus

the medieval term for the lands of the East Slavs; Rossiia is a Latin translation of it, used from the 17th century

skit

hermitage

skomorokhi

strolling players

sobornost

spirit of community

soviet

originally: workers’ council

starosta

elder

tariqat

Sufi brotherhoods

tukhta

artificially inflating production figures

uezd

district

ulus

a nomadic people and its territory in the Mongol Empire

USSR

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or Soviet Union, consisting of 15 Union Republics

veche

urban assembly

volost

township (peasant institution)

votchina

hereditary estate

zemliachestvo

association of workers from the same province

zemstvo

elected local government assembly

znamenny

traditional Russian liturgical chant

Index

A

Abkhazia 122

Agriculture 89, 100–1, 115–16, 119

Akhmatova, Anna 107

Akhmet, Khan 15

Aleksei, Tsar 30–3, 41

Alexander I 49–53, 65

Alexander II 59

reforms of 71–5

assassination of 82

Alexander Nevsky 8

Alexei Romanov 91

Anna, Empress 42–3

Antichrist 32, 41, 101

Arendt, Hannah 118

Armenia 122

Army, French (Grande Armée) 50–3

Army, Muscovite/Russian/Soviet 18–19

Service Decree (1556) 18

and Cossacks 35–6

standing army 37–8

status of officers 40, 42, 93

Guards 42, 47, 49

recruits 44, 51

and Napoleonic War 50–3

and Crimean War 57–9

Military Conscription Act 72