DIAGHILEV, Sergey Pavlovich                                                              ALEXANDER NEVSKY

  GOGOL, Nikolay Vasilyevich                                                                 LOMONOSOV, Mikhail Vasilyevich  

  MUSSORGSKY, Modest Petrovich                                                          CHEKHOV, Anton Pavlovich

  NICHOLAS I                                                                                      NICHOLAS II 

  GORKI, Maksim                                                                                  PUSHKIN, Aleksandr Sergeyevich  

  NABOKOV, Vladimir Vladimirovich                                                         BUNIN, Ivan Alekseyevich 

  PETER THE GREAT or PETER I                                                                 IVAN IV VASILYEVICH

  MILSTEIN, Nathan                                                                               GONCHAROV, Ivan Aleksandrovich

  SUVOROV, Aleksandr Vasilyevich                                                        GLIERE, Reinhold Moritzevich

  MILSTEIN, Nathan                                                                               GODUNOV, Boris Fyodorovich

  PAVLOVA, Anna Pavlovna                                                                    BARCLAY DE TOLLY, Mikhail, Prince

  GLAZUNOV, Aleksandr Konstantinovich                                                BELLINGSHAUSEN, Fabian Gottlieb von  

  BALANCHINE, George                                                                          KARAMZIN, Nikolay Mikhaylovich

  GLINKA, Mikhail Ivanovich                                                                    RIMSKY-KORSAKOV, Nikolay Andreyevich

  CATHERINE THE GREAT                                                                                             ALEXANDER II  

  ALEXANDER III                                                                                   ELIZABETH PETROVNA

  YELTSIN, Boris Nikolayevich,

DIAGHILEV, Sergey Pavlovich (1872–1929), Russian ballet impresario who, with the Ballets Russes (1909–29), revived ballet as a serious art form.

Diaghilev was extraordinarily effective in stimulating the creative gifts of the people he worked with, and his drawing together of the major talents of his era was a catalyst for much of the art and music of the period. His scenic designers, besides Bakst and Benois, included the French artists Henri Matisse, Georges Braque, and Maurice Utrillo, as well as the poet-designer Jean Cocteau (who also wrote ballet scenarios for Diaghilev) and Pablo Picasso. Diaghilev commissioned many musical scores from the Russian-born composer Igor Stravinsky, including The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911), The Rite of Spring (1913), Les Noces (1923), and Apollon musagete (1928). He also commissioned Daphnis and Chloe (1912), by the French composer Maurice Ravel; The Three-Cornered Hat (1919), by the Spaniard Manuel de Falla; and works by the Frenchmen Darius Milhaud and Erik Satie. Major choreographers of the 20th century who passed through his company were Russian-born George Balanchine, Leonide Massine, Bronislava Nijinska (1891–1972), and Serge Lifar.

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GOGOL, Nikolay Vasilyevich (1809–52), Russian writer, whose plays, short stories, and novels rank among the great masterpieces of 19th-century Russian realist literature.

In 1836 Gogol’s play The Inspector General appeared. A rollicking satire on the cupidity and stupidity of bureaucratic officials, it is a comedy of errors regarded by many critics as one of the most significant plays in Russian literature. It concerns the local officials of a small town who mistake a young traveler for an expected government inspector and offer him propitiatory bribes to induce him to overlook their misconduct in office.

Chichikov’s travels provide the occasion for profound reflections on the degrading and stultifying influence of serfdom on both owner and serf. The work also contains a large number of brilliantly depicted Russian provincial types. Dead Souls exerted an enormous influence on succeeding generations of Russian writers. Many of the witty sayings expressed in its pages have become Russian maxims.

As published, Dead Souls was intended to constitute the first part of a larger work; Gogol began the sequel but in a fit of hypochondriacal melancholy burned the manuscript. In 1842 Gogol published another famous work, "The Overcoat," a short story about an overworked clerk who falls victim to Russian social injustice. In the following year Gogol made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and on his return a priest persuaded him that his fictional work was sinful. Gogol thereupon destroyed a number of his unpublished manuscripts. He died March 4, 1852, in Moscow. Gogol is ranked with such literary giants as the novelists Leo Tolstoy, Ivan Turgenev, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky and the poet Aleksandr Pushkin.

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MUSSORGSKY, Modest Petrovich (1839–81), the most original and influential of the 19th-century Russian nationalist composers.

Born March 21, 1839, in Karevo, Mussorgsky was educated privately and at a military academy in Saint Petersburg. When he was 18 years old Mussorgsky met the Russian nationalist composer Aleksandr Dargomyzhsky (1813–69), through whom he joined the circle of Russian nationalist composers now known as The Five. In 1858 he resigned from military service to devote himself to music; after 1863 he supported him self as a government clerk.

Musically, Mussorgsky was self-taught, except for some study with two members of The Five, Mily Balakirev and Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov. His bold, unorthodox harmonies, based on the scales of Russian folk music, influenced later non-Russian composers. His songs, among the finest of the 19th century, reflect his desire to reproduce the rhythms and contours of Russian speech. So also does his masterpiece, the opera Boris Godunov, based on a drama by the Russian author Aleksandr Pushkin. Completed in 1868 and first produced (after considerable changes) in 1874, it is a monumental work, unusual in its musical and dramatic use of the chorus and admired for its psychological insight and its evocation of the Russian people. In 1896 it was reorchestrated and in places reharmonized by Rimsky-Korsakov and is best known in this version. Mussorgsky’s other works include the piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition (1874, orchestrated in 1922 by the French composer Maurice Ravel); the symphonic poem Night on Bald Mountain (1867); the song cycles The Nursery (1872) and Songs and Dances of Death (1877); and the unfinished operas Kovanshchina, completed by Rimsky-Korsakov, and The Fair at Sorochinsk, completed by Cesar Cui (1835–1918), another member of The Five. Mussorgsky died on March 28, 1881, in St. Petersburg.

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GORKI, Maksim, pseudonym of ALEKSEI MAKSIMOVICH PESHKOV (1868–1936), Soviet novelist, playwright, and essayist, who was a founder of Socialist Realism. Although known principally as a writer, he was also prominent in the Russian revolutionary movement.

Gorki was born March 16, 1868, in Nizhny Novgorod (renamed Gorkiy in his honor from 1932 to 1991), into a peasant family. He was self–educated. Compelled to earn his own living from the age of nine, Gorki worked for many years at menial jobs and tramped over a great part of European Russia. During this time he shot himself through a lung in an attempted suicide, later developing tuberculosis, which left him in ill health for the rest of his life. His pen name means "the bitter one" in Russian.

Gorki’s first short story was published in a Tiflis newspaper in 1892, and thereafter he wrote stories and sketches frequently for publication in various newspapers. His collected Sketches and Stories (1898) was an instantaneous success and made him famous throughout Russia. He had thrown off his earlier romanticism and wrote realistically although optimistically of the harshness of the life of the lower classes in Russia. He was the first Russian author to write knowledgeably and sympathetically about workers and such people as tramps and thieves, emphasizing their courageous fight against overwhelming odds. "Twenty-six Men and a Girl" (1899; trans. 1902), a tale of sweatshop conditions in a bakery, is considered by many his finest short story.

In 1899 Gorki became associated with the revolutionary activities of the Marxists, and in 1906 he went abroad to raise funds for the Russian Social Democratic Labor party. In 1907, because of failing health, he settled on the Italian island of Capri. He returned to Russia in 1915.

Gorki supported the Russian Revolution of 1917 and was active in Soviet literary organizations. Compelled by illness to leave the country in 1922, he spent six years in Sorrento, Italy. On his return to the USSR he was received with official honors. It is supposed that his sudden death on June 18, 1936, was ordered by dictator Joseph Stalin.

Gorki’s novels include Mother (1907; trans. 1929), an influential piece of propaganda about the revolutionary spirit of an old peasant; and the tetralogy The Life of Klim Samgin (1927–36; trans. 1930–38), a series on Russian history from 1880 to 1917. His best-known play is The Lower Depths (1902; trans. 1912), which depicts men reduced to the ultimate depths of degradation but retaining positive qualities.

Among Gorki’s best works are his autobiographical and literary memoirs. The trilogy consisting of Childhood (1913–14; trans. 1915), In the World (1915–16; trans. 1917), and the ironically titled My Universities (1923; trans. as Reminiscences of My Youth, 1952), is considered a major artistic achievement because it lacks the excessive philosophizing of his earlier works and because it contains numerous memorable characterizations. Reminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev (1920–28; trans. 1949), which avoids the worshipful approach to famous writers common among Russian literary critics up to that time, has been hailed as Gorki’s masterpiece.

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NABOKOV, Vladimir Vladimirovich (1899–1977), Russian-American novelist, poet, and critic, whose brilliant and challenging novels and stories earned him the highest critical acclaim as a major international literary figure.

Nabokov was born April 23, 1899, in Saint Petersburg, into a prominent and wealthy aristocratic family. They fled to the West in 1919 in the wake of the Russian Revolution; Nabokov graduated (1922) from the University of Cambridge with highest honors. Under the pseudonym of Vladimir Sirin, he began writing for the Russian emigre press in Berlin, where he lived from 1923 to 1937. During the next three years he lived in France and there began to write in English. In 1940 Nabokov moved to the U.S. and five years later became an American citizen. His first novel in English, Bend Sinister, appeared in 1947. He had a minor literary reputation until the publication in Paris of Lolita (1955) made him a major literary figure. The astonishing novel recounts the intense and obsessive involvement of a middle-aged man with a sexually precocious young girl, whom Nabokov termed a "nymphet." Having caused a sensation in Europe, the book was published in the U.S. in 1958 and received a similar reception.

During the 1960s some of Nabokov’s early work in Russian, such as Invitation to a Beheading, was translated into English and other languages. Pale Fire (1962), his first published novel after Lolita, was also widely acclaimed. His translation, with commentaries, of the Russian writer Aleksandr Pushkin’s novel Eugene Onegin (4 vol.) appeared in 1964. Speak, Memory (1966) is a highly evocative account of his childhood in imperial Russia and his later life up to 1940; the memoirs were originally published in 1951 in a shorter form as Conclusive Evidence. King, Queen, Knave, which was written in Berlin and appeared in Russian and German editions in 1928, was published in an English translation in 1968. Ada appeared in 1969, and the English translation of Mary, first published in 1926, appeared in 1970. Glory, first published in 1932, appeared in an English translation in 1972. In 1973 he published two books: A Russian Beauty and Other Stories and Strong Opinions, nonfiction pieces. In 1959 Nabokov had moved to Switzerland, where, despite his eminence, he led a reclusive life until his death on July 2, 1977, at Montreux.

Nabokov’s unique province is the complex tragicomedy, with time and space telescoped or expanded and metaphors and similes juggled. As he has said, "While I keep everything on the very brink of parody, there must be, on the other hand, an abyss of seriousness . . . ."

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NICHOLAS II, (1868–1918), emperor of Russia (1894–1917); one of the major European leaders of the pre–World War I era, the last czar of the Russian Empire.

Russia’s defeats and the suffering caused by the war among the people were blamed on Nicholas, especially after he assumed personal command of the army in 1915. Forced to abdicate in March 1917, Nicholas was held captive by the Bolsheviks until executed, along with his family, at Yekaterinburg on the night of July 16–17, 1918. Eighty years later, the remains of Nicholas, the Empress Alexandra, three of their daughters, and four members of their household staff were buried in a state ceremony in the Cathedral of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in Saint Petersburg.

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During Peter’s reign Russia emerged as a great European power, in part because of his introduction of many Western European scientific, technological, cultural, and political conceptions and practices. In 1696, after creating a river fleet, the first Russian navy, Peter captured from the Turks the important fortress of Azov, which commanded the Sea of Azov and gave Russia access to the Black Sea. The following year, in an effort to secure allies among the European powers against the Turks and the Swedes and in order to acquaint himself with Western technology, Peter accompanied a diplomatic mission to the principal capitals of Western Europe. During his travels he induced about 900 artisans, craftsmen, technical advisers, and other experts to emigrate to Russia. Later he sent many young Russians abroad to learn Western crafts and trades.

Peter was proclaimed emperor in 1721 and thus established the Russian Empire. He introduced such internal reforms as abolition of the power of the boyars, or aristocrats, and the subordination of those nobles and of the church to the throne; the encouragement of industry, trade, and education; and the reorganization of the administrative apparatus of the state to make it more modern and efficient. During Peter’s reign the Russian alphabet was simplified, Arabic numerals were introduced, the first newspaper in the Russian language was published, schools were founded, and an Academy of Sciences was established.

Under Peter, Russia became a regimented state. His police-state philosophy was based on the conviction that, just as he spent his life unceasingly in service for the state, so his subjects, whose welfare was his object, should discharge their obligation to the state. Both his reforms and his swift, often cruel, reprisals for infractions of his regulations made indelible impressions upon Russian life. He died in St. Petersburg on Feb. 8, 1725.

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PUSHKIN, Aleksandr Sergeyevich (1799–1837), Russian poet and author, who founded the literature of his language with epic and lyric poems, plays, novels, and short stories.

That same year Pushkin published his Ruslan and Ludmila, a long romantic poem based on folklore, which earned him a reputation as one of Russia’s most promising poetic talents. The influence of Lord Byron shows itself, along with Pushkin’s own love of liberty, in his next major poems, The Prisoner of the Caucasus (1822), The Fountain of Bakhchisarai (1822), and The Gypsies (1823–24). He began his most famous work, Eugene Onegin, in 1823; a Byronic love story with a realistic contemporary setting that has been described as the first of the great Russian novels (although in verse), it was not completed until 1831. Transferred to Odessa in 1823, he incurred the stern disapproval of a superior. He was dismissed from government service in 1824 and banished to his mother’s estate near Pskov. There he wrote (1824–25) Boris Godunov, a Russian historical tragedy in the Shakespearean tradition, published six years later. In 1826 Czar Nicholas I, recognizing his enormous popularity, pardoned him. Pushkin continued to draw upon Russian history in two long poems, Poltava (1828) and The Bronze Horseman (1833), and in his novel of the Pugachev rebellion, The Captain’s Daughter (1836). He also wrote short stories, the best known of which is "The Queen of Spades." Pushkin died Feb. 10, 1837, from wounds that he suffered in a duel which he had fought in St. Petersburg.

Pushkin provided a literary heritage for Russians, whose native language had hitherto been considered unfit for literature. He was also a versatile writer of great vigor and optimism who understood the many facets of the Russian character. His lyric poetry—said to be delightful to the Russian ear but untranslatable—and his simple, vivid prose were invaluable models for the writers who followed him.

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LOMONOSOV, Mikhail Vasilyevich (1711–65), Russian writer, chemist, and astronomer, who made important contributions to both literature and science.

Interested in furthering Russian education, Lomonosov helped to found the University of Moscow in 1755, and in the same year wrote a grammar that reformed the Russian literary language by combining Old Church Slavonic with the vulgar tongue. He published the first history of Russia in 1760 and invented a new system of meter in his poetry, which consisted mostly of eloquent odes. He also revived the art of Russian mosaic and built a mosaic and colored-glass factory. Most of Lomonosov’s accomplishments, however, were unknown outside Russia until long after his death in St. Petersburg on April 15, 1765.

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ALEXANDER NEVSKY (1220?–63), Russian national hero and saint. The son of Yaroslav Vsevolodovich (1191?–1246), grand prince of the medieval Russian state of Vladimir, Alexander was elected prince of the state of Novgorod in 1236. In 1240 he won a victory over the Swedes on the Neva River near present Saint Petersburg, thus acquiring his surname, Nevsky ("of the Neva"). The following year, he led the army of Novgorod against the Teutonic Knights, driving them from Russian soil and defeating them in a battle at Lake Peipus, Estonia, in April 1242. Later generations viewed this victory as having saved Russia from Western domination. When the Mongols invaded Russia from the east, Alexander collaborated with them, acting as mediator between his people and the Mongol Golden Horde. In 1246 the Mongols made him grand prince of Kiev, and in 1251 they installed him as prince of Vladimir, replacing his brother Andrei (d. 1264). As ruler of Vladimir, Kiev, and Novgorod, he did much to unify the principalities of northern Russia. Alexander is recognized as a saint by the Russian Orthodox church; his feast day is September 12.

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SUVOROV, Aleksandr Vasilyevich (1729–1800), Russian military leader, born either in Moscow or in Finland. He entered the Russian army as a boy, was made a colonel in 1762 during the Seven Years’ War, and became a major general in 1768. During the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–74 Suvorov fought in the campaign of 1773–74 and he was commander of the allied Russian and Austrian armies in the Russo-Turkish War of 1787–92. For his decisive victory over the Ottoman Turks at the Rimnik (now Rimnicul) River in 1789 he received the surname Rimniksky and was made a count.

In 1799, during the War of the Second Coalition against revolutionary France, Suvorov commanded the Allied forces in northern Italy. Under his direction they won three successive victories, at Cassano d’Adda, the Trebbia River, and Novi Ligure. Suvorov then led his armies across the Alps to join the Russian forces fighting the French in Switzerland, but he was forced by the French to retreat. He returned to Russia the following year in disgrace and was dismissed from his post by Emperor Paul I (1754–1801). Suvorov died shortly afterward.


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MILSTEIN, Nathan (1903–92), Russian-American violinist, renowned for the beauty and purity of his tone. A student of the influential Russian violinist Leopold Auer at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, Milstein made his debut in 1915 and lived in the U.S. after 1929. His strong, refined playing and intellectual approach to music were widely admired. He performed extensively with the Russian-American pianist Vladimir Horowitz and the Russian-American cellist Gregor Piatigorsky and was associated with the Belgian violinist Eugene Ysaye in Brussels.


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GONCHAROV, Ivan Aleksandrovich (1812–91), Russian novelist, born in Simbirsk. After a period of employment in the civil service, he worked in the government finance ministry. In 1865 Goncharov served as secretary to the head of a governmental commercial mission to Japan.

As a writer, Goncharov worked slowly and consequently produced little. His reputation rests on Oblomov (1859; trans. 1954), on which he spent ten years. Oblomov is the story of an indolent Russian provincial landowner, and the term oblomovism entered into the Russian language as a designation of habitual laziness. The Precipice (1869; trans. 1915), which depicts a Russian household presided over by a kindhearted but tyrannical grandmother, contains an unsympathetic treatment of nihilism, then a widely held doctrine in Russia. Among his other works are A Common Story (1847) and The Frigate "Pallas" (1858), which is a detailed account of his journey to Japan.

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GLIERE, Reinhold Moritzevich (1875–1956), Russian composer, one of the most facile and popular of the country’s modern composers. Born in Kiev, Ukraine, he studied under the Russian composers Anton Arensky (1861–1906), Sergey Taneyev (1856–1914), and Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov (1859–1935). His early music followed styles of the Russian nationalist school, with elements of late romanticism and impressionism, and he later became a successful composer on revolutionary and folk themes, following the Soviet government dictum of "socialist realism" in the arts. His best-known works are his Symphony No. 3, titled Ilya Murometz (1911), based on the tale of a legendary Russian hero; and the ballet Red Poppy (1927). His other works include the opera Shakh-Senem (1925), based on Azerbaijani folk music; and orchestral and chamber works.

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GLAZUNOV, Aleksandr Konstantinovich (1865–1936), Russian composer, born in Saint Petersburg. Glazunov studied with the eminent Russian composer Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov. Glazunov was the last important composer of the Russian national school founded by Mikhail Glinka; his work also shows the influence of the Hungarian composer Franz Liszt and the German composer Richard Wagner. In 1889, together with Rimsky-Korsakov, he completed the opera Prince Igor, left unfinished by the Russian composer Aleksandr Borodin on his death (1887). Glazunov taught at the St. Petersburg Conservatory between the years 1900 and 1906 and was its director from 1906 to 1917. He left the Soviet Union in 1928 and lived in Paris. His compositions include eight symphonies, the symphonic poems Stenka Razin and The Kremlin (1892), the ballets Raymonda (1898) and The Seasons (1901), the Violin Concerto op. 82 (1904), chamber music, and music for piano and for voice.

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CHEKHOV, Anton Pavlovich (1860–1904), Russian dramatist and short-story writer, who is one of the foremost figures in Russian literature.

In the Russian theater Chekhov is preeminently a representation of modern naturalism. His plays, like his stories, are studies of the spiritual failure of characters in an aristocratic society that is disintegrating. To portray these themes Chekhov developed a new dramatic technique, which he called "indirect action." He concentrated on subtleties of characterization and interaction between characters rather than on plot and direct action. In a Chekhov play important dramatic events take place offstage. Some of his plays were originally rejected in Moscow, but his technique has become accepted by modern playwrights and audiences, and his plays appear frequently in theatrical repertories.

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BUNIN, Ivan Alekseyevich (1870–1953), Russian poet, novelist, and Nobel laureate, born in Voronezh, and educated at the University of Moscow. In 1903 he received the Pushkin Prize of the Russian Academy for his translations of the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and the English poets Lord Byron and Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Bunin’s literary reputation rests mainly on his realistic tales, short stories, and novels, in which his principal theme is the bleakness of life in provincial Russia. Bunin was considerably influenced by the works of the Russian writers Anton Chekhov and Ivan Turgenev. After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, Bunin made his home in Paris. In 1933 he became the first Russian to be awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. His works include The Gentleman from San Francisco and Other Stories (1916) and the novels The Village (1910) and Mitya’s Love (1925).

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BELLINGSHAUSEN, Fabian Gottlieb von (1778–1852), Russian explorer and naval officer, born on the island of Osel (now Saaremaa), Estonia. Bellingshausen entered the imperial Russian navy in 1797, and received his training at the port of Kronshtadt. In 1809, as a commissioned naval officer, he participated in the Russian action against Sweden. Ten years later he was given command of two ships, Vostok and Mirny, and ordered to explore Antarctica. In 1819 he penetrated 70° S lat into the Antarctic sea now bearing his name. In the sea he discovered and named Peter I and Alexander I islands. On his return trip to Russia in 1821, Bellingshausen explored the Society Islands, one of which now bears his name. During the Russian war with Turkey (1828–29), Bellingshausen distinguished himself at Varna (now in Bulgaria) and was promoted to vice-admiral. He was later named admiral and was appointed governor of Kronshtadt.

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BARCLAY DE TOLLY, Mikhail, Prince (1761–1818), Russian field marshal, born in Livonia, and descended from an old Scottish family settled there. Having entered a Russian regiment, he fought in the Turkish War of 1788–89, in the campaign against Sweden in 1790, and in those against Poland in 1792 and 1794. Although the Russian national party disliked Barclay as a foreigner, Alexander I appointed him minister of war in 1810. Two years later, during the war against Napoleon, Barclay was made commander in chief of the Army of the West. His tactics of continual retreat into the depths of Russia aroused still more vehement opposition by the Russian national party. When the French captured Smolensk on August 17, he yielded his command to Marshal Mikhail Kutuzov (1745–1813), who continued Barclay’s strategy with success. After Kutuzov’s death Barclay was commander in chief in the German and French campaigns, and his tactics finally defeated Napoleon. Barclay took part in the 1814 invasion of France and was made a field marshal. At the end of the war he was created a prince.

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Balanchine is considered the foremost representative of neoclassicism in ballet. Through him, ballet in the U.S. has a direct connection with the Russian classical ballet tradition of the celebrated 19th-century choreographer Marius Petipa. Although ballets such as The Nutcracker (1954; rev. 1964) and the powerful Don Quixote (1965) have a story line, Balanchine is best known for his plotless ballets, such as The Four Temperaments (1946) and Jewels (1967), which explore dance for the sake of pattern and the movement of the human body. Known also for his musical sensitivity, he choreographed the music of many 20th-century composers, among them the Russian Sergey Prokofiev (The Prodigal Son, 1929), the Austrian-born Arnold Schoenberg (Opus 34, 1954), and the American Charles Ives (Ivesiana, 1954). His nearly 40-year friendship with the Russian-born composer Igor Stravinsky resulted in works such as Apollon Musagete (1928; rev. as Apollo, 1957), Agon (1956), and Violin Concerto (1972). Balanchine’s more than 100 ballets also include the lyric Liebeslieder Walzer (1960) and Americana such as Stars and Stripes (1958). Balanchine died in New York City, April 30, 1983.

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PAVLOVA, Anna Pavlovna (1882?–1931), Russian ballerina, the most famous classical ballerina of her era. Born in Saint Petersburg, she was trained at the school of the Imperial Ballet, made her debut as soloist in 1899, and became prima ballerina of the company in 1906. Pavlova toured Europe in 1907, appeared briefly with the Ballets Russes of the Russian impresario Sergey Diaghilev, and, in 1910 she made her American debut with the Russian dancer Mikhail Mordkin (1881–1944) at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. She founded her own company in 1911, and until 1925, when she retired, she danced extensively in Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Asia, often bringing ballet for the first time to remote areas. Conservative in her aesthetics, she was an outstanding representative of classical Russian ballet, admired for the poetic quality of her movement. She was also interested in ethnic dances and in the dance techniques of India and Japan. Her most famous classical roles were in Giselle, Swan Lake, Les Sylphides, Don Quixote, Coppelia, and in the solo dance The Dying Swan, created for her in 1905 by the Russian choreographer Michel Fokine.

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KARAMZIN, Nikolay Mikhaylovich (1766–1826), Russian poet, short-story writer, and historian. His Letters of a Russian Traveler, 1789–90 (1790–92; trans. 1803) gives his impressions of Western Europe, where he was received in literary circles; it helped to introduce the cult of sentimental literature. Appointed court historian in 1803, Karamzin devoted the rest of his life to compiling the massive History of the Russian State (12 vol., 1816–29); it remained incomplete at his death, closing with the early 17th century. The work is now considered less important as a scholarly achievement than for its great influence on Russian literary style and the Russian language. Among Karamzin’s fiction, the best known is the story "Poor Liza" (1792; trans. 1803).

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IVAN IV VASILYEVICH, called The Terrible (1530–84), grand duke of Moscow (1533–47) and czar of Russia (1547–84), one of the creators of the Russian state.

Ivan’s reign after 1560 is remarkable more for the czar’s repeated displays of erratic behavior and wanton brutality than for his statesmanship. He surrounded himself with a select group of noblemen, whom he allowed to exercise despotic power over his entire domain. In 1570 he ravaged the town of Novgorod and ordered the slaying of thousands of its inhabitants because they had been reported, on dubious authority, to be conspiring against him. In 1850 Ivan brought personal tragedy upon himself when, in a fit of anger, he killed his eldest and favorite son. In his later years, Ivan began the acquisition of Siberia after most of the Ob River Basin had been brought under Russian control (1581–83) by the cossack leader Yermak Timofeyevich (fl. 1579–85). Ivan died on March 18, 1584.


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GODUNOV, Boris Fyodorovich (1551?–1605), czar of Russia (1598–1605), who increased the power of the Russian monarchy and church and imposed serfdom on the peasants.

The story of Boris Godunov became the basis of the tragedy Boris Godunov by the Russian poet Aleksandr Pushkin. It was later made into an opera of the same title by the Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky.

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RIMSKY-KORSAKOV, Nikolay Andreyevich (1844–1908), Russian composer and musical theorist, one of the greatest composers of the Russian nationalist school, and a great master of orchestration.

Among Rimsky-Korsakov’s works are the operas Snegoyrachka (Snow Maiden, 1880–81) and Le coq d’Or (The Golden Cockerel, 1906–7) and the symphonic works Capriccio Espagnol (1887), Scheherazade (1888), and the Russian Easter Overture (1888). His autobiography, My Musical Life, was published posthumously in 1909 (trans. 1942).

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GLINKA, Mikhail Ivanovich (1804–57), Russian composer, born in Novospasskoye, and educated in Saint Petersburg. Glinka studied with various teachers in Russia, Italy, and Germany. Until 1835 his compositions consisted mainly of songs. His opera A Life for the Tsar (1836), which drew its story and music from Russian folktales and folk songs, was the first Russian opera of a national character. The music of his second opera, Russlan and Ludmilla (1842), based on a poem by the Russian poet Aleksandr Pushkin, was also drawn largely from Russian folk music. Glinka established himself as the founder of the Russian national school of music, which was subsequently carried on by such composers as Aleksandr Borodin, Modest Mussorgsky, and Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov. Glinka was also interested in the popular music and dance of Spain, where he lived from 1845 to 1847, which inspired the overtures Jota Aragonesa and Night in Madrid (1851). His other works include the orchestral fantasia Kamarinskaya (1848), chamber music, piano pieces, and songs.

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ELIZABETH PETROVNA (1709–62), empress of Russia (1741–62), born near Moscow, the youngest daughter of Peter the Great and Catherine I. She became empress in 1741 by staging a palace revolution that deposed the infant emperor Ivan VI (1740–64) and his mother Anna Leopoldovna (1718–46), who acted as regent. In 1743 Elizabeth won a historic diplomatic victory when her representative negotiated an advantageous end to the long-standing dispute between Sweden and Russia. She was chiefly responsible for establishing and maintaining the alliance of Austria, France, and Russia that almost defeated Prussia in the Seven Years’ War. Until her death, a year before the end of the war, the armies of the alliance had been successful, but soon afterward the alliance disintegrated and Prussia gained the final victory. She named her nephew Peter III as her successor to the throne. Elizabeth’s nonpolitical achievements include the establishment of the University of Moscow in 1755 and the Academy of Arts at Saint Petersburg in 1757.

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YELTSIN, Boris Nikolayevich

Russian Federation President
Russia in Crisis

YELTSIN, Boris Nikolayevich, (1931–    ), Russian political leader, president of the Russian Federation (1991–    ), and chairman of the Council of Heads of States of the Commonwealth of Independent States. Born in Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) and trained as a construction engineer, he became a full-time Communist party worker in 1968 and first secretary of the Sverdlovsk region in 1976.

Yeltsin was brought to Moscow by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, whose political and economical reforms he embraced, and was installed as first secretary of the Moscow City Party Committee in 1985. He quickly alienated party reactionaries and, with Gorbachev’s acquiescence, was stripped of his post in 1987. In the March 1989 elections for the Congress of People’s Deputies, however, he won overwhelmingly in the Moscow constituency. The following year he was elected to the congress of the Russian SFSR, which designated him Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR. In June of that same year he declared the republic’s sovereignty.

Critical both of the party and of Gorbachev’s delay in implementing reforms for democratization and a free market economy, Yeltsin gained a wide following and in June 1991 became the first popularly elected president of Russia.

When reactionaries moved to depose Gorbachev as president of the USSR in August, Yeltsin led the fight to suppress the coup. Emerging as the dominant figure in Moscow, he asserted control over all Soviet Union institutions, and led the effort that replaced the USSR with the more loosely constituted CIS.

Russian Federation President

Yeltsin presided over Russia’s treaty of federation, in March 1992, and achieved an international victory in January 1993 when he and U.S. President George Bush signed the START II Treaty, calling for the elimination of most of the nuclear warheads held by both powers. Legislative opposition to reforms culminated in late September when he dissolved parliament and parliament deposed him as president. The standoff, punctuated by violence, ended on October 4, when Yeltsin, with the army’s support, had opposition leaders arrested. In elections in December, voters simultaneously approved a constitution that expanded his presidential powers and elected a parliament in which his opponents held increased strength.

Despite weak poll ratings and questionable health, he declared his candidacy in February 1996 for a second presidential term. He led his rivals with about 35 percent of the vote in the first round of presidential balloting in June, and defeated a Communist challenger, Gennady Zyuganov (1944–    ), in a runoff election in July. In subsequent months, as his health worsened, he surrendered most of his responsibilities to his cabinet ministers. He reclaimed his powers in November after undergoing multiple-bypass heart surgery.

In March 1997 Yeltsin traveled to Helsinki, Finland, for a summit meeting with U.S. President Bill Clinton. In May, Yeltsin signed a formal peace treaty with Chechnya and treaties of friendship and cooperation with Belarus and Ukraine; dropping his objections to the eastward expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), he signed a NATO "Founding Act" at a summit conference in Paris in the same month. A month later, Yeltsin was welcomed at the Group of Seven (G-7) convention in Denver, Colo., at which the leaders of the seven leading industrial democracies formalized the group’s expansion to include Russia. In September, Yeltsin pledged that he would not run again when his presidential term expires in the year 2000.
YELTSIN

Russia in Crisis

During 1998, as the value of the ruble sank, Yeltsin’s behavior became increasingly erratic, and calls for his resignation increased. He astonished the nation in March by dismissing his entire cabinet; in a subsequent confrontation with parliament, he succeeded in winning confirmation of his choice for prime minister, Sergey Kiriyenko (1962–    ), who had little previous government experience. In August, Yeltsin attempted to replace Kiriyenko with Viktor Chernomyrdin (1938–    ), provoking another standoff with parliament; this time, however, it was the weakened Yeltsin who backed down. Unable to win the support of the parliament, Chernomyrdin withdrew his candidacy, and Yeltsin was forced to nominate a compromise choice, Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov (1929–    ), who quickly won the parliament’s confirmation. Meanwhile, a Moscow summit meeting with Clinton in early September produced no significant agreements and no evident solution for Russia’s deepening economic crisis. Yeltsin resigned in 1999. Vladimir Putin won the election of March 26, 2000 and became the Second President of New Russia. He served as the acting President after the resignation of Yeltsin. Putin was once a KGB spy and later the head of the FSB.

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