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(in Russian ïåðèîä Òðåòüåãî Æðóãðà),
(in Russian Ñîâåòñêèé Ñîþç),
Includes only general works. Chronologically embraces the period 1917–1991.
29860–29909. Russian sources.
29910. vacant
Pipes, Richard. Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime. – 1993. # The latter partly based on new archival sources.
conclave (in Russian êîíêëàâ),
the Politburo (in Russian the Ïîëèòáþðî; full official name: the Political Buro of the Central Committee of the CPSU),
the Presidium of the Central Committee (in Russian the Ïðåçèäèóì ÖÊ),
the Council of Ministers of the USSR (in Russian Ñîâåò Ìèíèñòðîâ ÑÑÑÐ),
the Doctrine (in Russian Äîêòðèíà), a term under which D. Andreev means Marxism-Leninism.
Marxism (in Russian ìàðêñèçì),
Marxism-Leninism (in Russian ìàðêñèçì-ëåíèíèçì),
A bibliography on Leninism: 1) Besancon, Alain. The Rise of the Gulag: Intellectual Origins of Leninism. – 1981. # Originally published in French, 1977.
1) Harding, Neil. Lenin’s Political Thought, 2 vol. – 1977–1981.
2) Kingston-Mann, Esther. Lenin and the Problem of Marxist Peasant Revolution. – 1983. # Emphasizes the role of the peasants in the Russian Revolution.
3) Lane, David. Leninism: A Sociological Interpretation. – 1981.
4) Lukacs, Georg. Lenin: A Study on the Unity of His Thought. – 1971/ # Originally published in German, 1924. An evaluation by a Hungarian Marxist philosopher.
5) Meyer, Alfred G. Leninism. – 1957, reprinted 1986. # An analysis of Lenin's political philosophy.
6) Page, Stanley W. The Geopolitics of Leninism. – 1982. # A critical look at Lenin’s politics.
nomenklatura (in Russian íîìåíêëàòóðà),
is mentioned by D. Andreev only in descriptive form: thin privileged stratum (in Russian òîíêàÿ ïðèâèëåãèðîâàííàÿ ïðîñëîéêà),
the shortage of goods (in Russian íåõâàòêà òîâàðîâ),
Soviet men’s way of life (in Russian æèçíåííûé óêëàä ñîâåòñêèõ ëþäåé),
the Writer’s Union of the USSR ( in Russian Ñîþç ïèñàòåëåé ÑÑÑÐ),
Synonyms:
“bodies” (in Russian «îðãàíû»).
bodies of security (in Russian îðãàíû áåçîïàñíîñòè).
bodies of “security” (in Russian îðãàíû «áåçîïàñíîñòè»).
GB (in Russian ÃÁ).
the machinery of security (in Russian àïïàðàò áåçîïàñíîñòè).
the mechanism of security (in Russian ìåõàíèçì áåçîïàñíîñòè).
state security (in Russian ãîñáåçîïàñíîñòü).
the system of security (in Russian ñèñòåìà áåçîïàñíîñòè).
Conditional synonyms:
chekist (in Russian ÷åêèñò), a synonym of the notion gebist. In more narrow, historically clinging sense – an employee of the Vecheka.
chekistic (in Russian ÷åêèñòñêèé), referring to bodies of state security.
gebist (in Russian ãåáèñò), an employee of bodies of state security.
Lubyanka (in Russian Ëóáÿíêà), the building of bodies of state security on the square Lubyanskaya in Moscow (former Dzerzhinsky square).
political police (in Russian ïîëèòè÷åñêàÿ ïîëèöèÿ), a generic notion, engulfing not only Soviet and post-Soviet bodies of state security, but also all historically known ones.
service of governmental security (in Russian ñëóæáà ïðàâèòåëüñòâåííîé áåçîïàñíîñòè), the future form of bodies of state security under antichrist.
Security , in Russian Áåçîïàñíîñòü), that, what bodies of state security serve. D. Andreev shows by means of the capital letter, that this notion is risen to the rank of idol in the Soviet state.
Historically changed names of bodies of state security (in chronological order):
The Vecheka (in Russian Â×Ê; an acronym derived from the Russian words for the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counterrevolution and Sabotage), the first from a series of security agencies, which was established in December 1917 in the first days of the Bolshevik government. The Vecheka (shortly Cheka) was charged with the preliminary investigation of counterrevolution and sabotage, but it quickly assumed responsibility for arresting, imprisoning, and executing “enemies of the state,” which included the former nobility, the bourgeoisie, and the clergy. The Cheka played a prominent role in the Civil War (1918–1920) and aided in crushing the anti-Soviet Kronshtadt and Antonov rebellions in 1921. When Soviet archives were opened in the 1990s, it was learned that the Cheka, which in 1921 had a staff of more than 250,000, was responsible for the execution of more than 140,000 people. Feliks Dzerzhinsky, the Cheka’s chief during the early years of Soviet power, molded the service into an effective, merciless tool of the ruling Communist Party.
The GPU (in Russian ÃÏÓ; an acronym derived from the Russian words for the State Political Administration). In 1922 the Cheka was supplanted by the GPU in an effort by the Communist Party to reduce the scale of the Cheka’s terror. A year later the GPU was renamed the OGPU (Unified State Political Administration) and given additional duties, including the administration of “corrective” labour camps and the surveillance of the population. As Joseph Stalin consolidated his power and directed the modernization of the Soviet Union, the OGPU implemented the forced collectivization of agriculture and the deportation of the kulaks (wealthy peasants) and staged show trials of “enemies of the people.” By the early 1930s the OGPU controlled all Soviet security functions, directing a vast army of informers in factories, government offices, and the Red Army. During this period the OGPU also conducted covert operations on foreign soil to disrupt the activities of the regime’s opponents, some of whom it kidnapped and murdered.
The NKVD (in Russian ÍÊÂÄ; an acronym derived from the Russian words for the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs of USSR). Synonym: the Narkomvnudel (in Russian Íàðêîìâíóäåë). In 1934 the OGPU was absorbed into the new NKVD, which helped Stalin to consolidate his power by carrying out purges. More than 750,000 people were executed in 1937–1938 alone, including tens of thousands of party officials and military and security officers. Among the victims were more than half the members of the ruling Central Committee (the Communist Party’s highest organ) as well as the NKVD’s first two chiefs, Genrikh Yagoda and Nikolay Yezhov. Yezhov was succeeded as head of the NKVD by Lavrenty Beria, who served from 1938 to 1953.
The NKGB (in Russian ÍÊÃÁ; an acronym derived from the Russian words for the People’s Commissariat of State Security of USSR. In 1941 responsibility for state security was transferred from the NKVD to the NKGB.
The MGB (in Russian ÌÃÁ; an acronym derived from the Russian words for the Ministry of State Security). Both agencies became ministries – the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) and the Ministry of State Security (MGB) – in 1946. Beria, as a member of the ruling ruling Central Committee, continued to supervise the two ministries while serving as head of the MVD. Beria also was responsible for the Soviet Union’s nascent nuclear weapons program and oversaw intelligence operations directed at the USand British atomic bomb projects. The MGB, directed by V.S. Abakumov under Beria’s supervision, played a major role in the Soviet Union’s war effort in World War II and in the subsequent consolidation of its power in eastern Europe. During the war, the MGB conducted espionage and counterespionage operations, administered prisoner-of-war camps, and ensured the loyalty of the officer corps. It also supervised the deportation to Siberia and Central Asia of groups suspected of disloyalty, including more than one million Volga Germans, Crimean Tatars, Kalmyks, Chechen-Ingush, and other people of the Caucasus. After the war, the MGB helped to crush all opposition, whether real or suspected, in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union; between 1945 and 1953 more than 750,000 Soviet citizens were arrested and punished for political crimes. Information uncovered in the 1990s indicated that by 1953 some 2,750,00 Soviet citizens were in jail or in forced-labour camps, and approximately the same number were in internal exile. Soviet foreign intelligence in the last decade of Stalin’s life was remarkable in both its scope and success. During World War II the MGB conducted operations in Nazi-occupied Europe. One of its networks, the “Red Orchestra,” comprised several hundred agents and informers, including agents in the German ministries of foreign affairs, labour, propaganda, and economics. Declassified Russian and American documents indicate that the Soviet Union had placed at least five agents in the US nuclear weapons program and possibly as many as 300 agents in the US government by 1945. The British diplomatic and security establishments also had been infiltrated by important agents, including Kim Philby, a senior British intelligence officer. Evidence suggests that Soviet agents in Britain passed 15,000 to 20,000 documents to Moscow between 1941 and 1945. British and American agents of Soviet intelligence were for the most part ideological supporters of the regime, and many were members of communist parties. Immediately following Stalin’s death in March 1953, the MGB was merged back into the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD), still under Beria. Before the end of summer, the post-Stalinist leadership under Khrushchev turned against the power-hungry Beria, and he was deposed and executed. A series of trials and executions continuing into 1956 eliminated a number of his senior associates. In the meantime, millions of political prisoners were released from the MVD’s vast system of forced-labour camps and from internal exile. The MVD was gradually dismantled and finally abolished in 1960.
The KGB (in Russian ÊÃÁ; an acronym derived from the Russian words for the Committee for State Security), foreign intelligence and domestic security agency of the Soviet Union. The KGB was the most durable of a series of security agencies starting with the Cheka. During the Soviet era the KGB’s responsibilities also included the protection of the country’s political leadership, the supervision of border troops, and the general surveillance of the population. The KGB was created in 1954 to serve as the “sword and shield of the Communist Party.” The new security service, which played a major role in the purge of Beria’s supporters, was designed to be carefully controlled by senior Communist Party officials. It was divided into approximately 20 directorates, the most important of which were those responsible for foreign intelligence, domestic counterintelligence, technical intelligence, protection of the political leadership, and the security of the country’s frontiers. In the late 1960s an additional directorate was created to conduct surveillance on suspected dissidents in the churches and among the intelligentsia. For the next 20 years the KGB became increasingly zealous in its pursuit of enemies, harassing, arresting, and sometimes exiling human rights advocates, Christian and Jewish activists, and intellectuals judged to be disloyal to the regime. Among the most famous of its victims were the Nobel laureates Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov. After World War II the KGB gradually expanded its foreign intelligence operations to become the world’s largest foreign intelligence service. As the Cold War with the United States intensified, the KGB came to be viewed as a counterpart of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA); however, unlike the CIA, the KGB conducted most of its activities domestically, on Soviet soil and against Soviet citizens. The KGB’s many agents sometimes posed as businessmen and journalists, though many used the more conventional diplomatic cover. Its successes included the infiltration of every major Western intelligence operation and the placement of agents of influence in almost every major capital. The KGB also was able to procure scientific and technical information for the Soviet military, and it repeatedly obtained advanced technology necessary for the development of Soviet submarines, airplanes, and rockets. Along with the GRU (Chief Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff), which was responsible for purely military operations, the KGB enjoyed tremendous access to the secrets of both its adversaries and its allies. By the end of the 1960s, the KGB had become firmly established as the Communist Party’s security watchdog. At its peak the KGB was the largest secret-police and foreign-intelligence organization in the world. Researchers with access to Communist Party archives put the number of KGB personnel at more than 480,000, including 200,000 soldiers in the Border Guards. Estimates of the number of informers in the Soviet Union are incomplete but usually range in the millions. Every Soviet leader depended on the KGB and its predecessors for information, surveillance of key elites, and control of the population. With the Communist Party and the army, the KGB formed the triad of power that ruled the Soviet Union. The KGB played a particularly important role in Soviet foreign policy. Foreign intelligence allowed the Soviet Union to maintain rough parity with the West in nuclear weapons and other weapons systems. Inside the country, however, the role of the KGB was baleful. Scholars disagree about the human cost of the KGB and its predecessors, but many estimate that they were responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people.
The value of KGB as an instrument of political control was reflected in the appointment of its head, Yury Andropov, to the Politburo (1973) and his succession to the head of the Communist party and the country in 1982. Under Andropov, the KGB recruited the “best and the brightest” members from the partyy establishment. Although it was aware of the extent of corruption in the decaying Soviet Union and did investigate and arrest some minor figures, it continued to be a servant of the party and was thus powerless to halt the country’s decline. The KGB did not fare as well under the reformist Soviet leader Gorbachev (1985–1991). Although Gorbachev respected the KGB’s prowess in foreign intelligence, his reform agenda undercut its authority as well as that of the party. In the summer of 1991, several senior KGB officers, including KGB chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov, played key roles in an abortive coup designed to return the Soviet system to ideological and bureaucratic purity. Afterward the KGB was systematically stripped of its extensive military units and many of its domestic security functions. A critical question in evaluating the KGB’s foreign and domestic operations is why it failed to prevent the eventual collapse of the Soviet system. There is ample evidence that the KGB suffered from the same problems of bureaucratic inefficiency and corruption that plagued the sclerotic political leadership. In addition, during the last decade of Soviet power, numerous KGB officials defected to the West or agreed to work as agents in place in Moscow. Moreover, some studies suggest that, despite its vaunted reputation for espionage, the KGB lacked the analytical skills necessary to form an accurate picture of the regime’s declining international and domestic situation. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the KGB came under the control of Russia. The government of Russian President Yeltsin supervised the division of the KGB into several major services responsible for internal security and foreign intelligence. Ukraine, Belarus, and other former Soviet republics established their own intelligence and security services, which maintained links to those of Russia. Nevertheless, efforts in Russia to reform the intelligence services were at best incomplete. The KGB and its leaders were never held accountable for crimes against the Soviet people.
The FSB (in Russian ÔÑÁ; an acronym derived from the Russian words for the Federal Security Service), Russian internal security and counterintelligence service created in 1994 as one of the successor agencies of the Soviet-era KGB. It is responsible for counterintelligence, antiterrorism, and surveillance of the military. The FSB occupies the former headquarters of the KGB on Lubyanka Square in downtown Moscow. During the late 1980s, as the Soviet government and economy were crumbling, the KGB survived better than most state institutions, suffering far fewer cuts in its personnel and budget. The agency was dismantled, however, after an attempted coup in August 1991 against Soviet leader Gorbachev in which some KGB units participated. In early 1992 the internal security functions of the KGB were reconstituted first as the Ministry of Security and less than two years later as the Federal Counterintelligence Service (FSK), which was placed under the control of the president. In 1995 Russian President Yeltsin renamed the service the FSB and granted it additional powers, enabling it to enter private homes and to conduct intelligence activities in Russia as well as abroad in cooperation with the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). Despite early promises to reform the Russian intelligence community, the FSB and the services that collect foreign intelligence and signals intelligence (the SVR and the Federal Agency for Government Communications and Information) remained largely unreformed and subject to little legislative or judicial scrutiny. Although some limits were placed on the FSB’s domestic surveillance activities – for example, spying on religious institutions and charitable organizations was reduced – all the services continued to be controlled by KGB veterans schooled under the old regime. Moreover, few former KGB officers were removed following the agency’s dissolution, and little effort was made to examine the KGB's operations or its use of informants. In 1998 Yeltsin appointed as director of the FSB Vladimir Putin, a KGB veteran who would later succeed Yeltsin as federal president. Yeltsin also ordered the FSB to expand its operations against labour unions in Siberia and to crack down on right-wing dissidents. As president, Putin increased the FSB’s powers to include countering foreign intelligence operations, fighting organized crime, and suppressing Chechen separatists. The FSB, the largest security service in Europe, is extremely effective at counterintelligence. Human rights activists, however, have claimed that it has been slow to shed its KGB heritage, and there have been allegations that it has manufactured cases against suspected dissidents and used threats to recruit agents. At the end of the 1990s, critics charged that the FSB had attempted to frame Russian academics involved in joint research with Western arms-control experts.
(The article from “Encyclopædia Britannica”, redacted and supplemented).
29960–29979. Russian sources.
29980. vacant
Albats, Yevgeniya. The State Within a State: The KGB and Its Hold on Russia. – 1994. # A history of the KGB by a distinguished Russian journalist who had access to the archives of the Communist Party and the security services.
Andrew, Christopher; Gordiyevsky, Oleg. KGB: The Inside Story of Its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev. – 1990. # An excellent general history of the KGB.
Andrew, Christopher; Mitrokhin, Vassily. The Mitrokhin Archive. – 1999. # Good studies of the KGB’s foreign intelligence operations.
Courtois, Stéphane. The Black Book of Communism. – 1999. # About the human cost of KGB repression.
Feklisov, Alexander. The Man Behind the Rosenbergs. – 2001. # Good studies of the KGB’s foreign intelligence operations.
Haynes, John; Klehr, Harvey. VENONA: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America. – 1999. # About the KGB activities in the United States.
Kalugin, Oleg. The First Directorate. – 1994. # Good studies of the KGB’s foreign intelligence operations.
Sudoplatov P. Special Tasks / Updated ed. – 1995/ # Contains interesting details about life within Stalin’s KGB but must be used with caution, because much of it is based on KGB myths and is not supported by Soviet documents declassified since the breakup of the Soviet Union.
West, Nigel; Tsarev, Oleg. The Crown Jewels. – 1999. # Good studies of the KGB’s foreign intelligence operations.
 to the gallery (2) V.S. Abakumov |
Abakumov, Viktor Semyonovich (in Russian Àáàêóìîâ, Âèêòîð Ñåìåíîâè÷; 1908–1954), a head of the MGB.
 to the gallery (5) |
Dzerzhinsky, Feliks Edmundovich (ïî-àíãë. Äçåðæèíñêèé, Ôåëèêñ Ýäìóíäîâè÷ ; 1877–1926), Bolshevik leader, head of the first Soviet secret police organization. Born in Dzerzhinovo, near Minsk. Son of a Polish nobleman, Dzerzhinsky joined the Kaunas (Kovno) organization of the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party in 1895. He became a party organizer, and, although he was arrested by the Russian Imperial Police for his revolutionary activities five times between 1897 and 1908, he repeatedly escaped from exile in Siberia. Not only did he participate in the Russian Revolution of 1905 but he also became a leader of the Polish-Lithuanian Social Democratic Party and was influential in convincing his colleagues to unite with the Russian Social Democrats in 1906. Afterward, Dzerzhinskyy pursued his revolutionary activities within the Russian Empire and in western Europe. Arrested for the sixth time in 1912, he remained in captivity until after the February Revolution of 1917. Dzerzhinsky was elected to the Bolshevik Party’s Central Committee in July 1917, and he played an active role in the October coup. On Dec. 20 (Dec. 7), 1917, he was named head of the new All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counterrevolution and Sabotage (Cheka), which became Soviet Russia’s security police agency. The Cheka helped stabilize Lenin’s dictatorship by arbitrarily executing real and alleged enemies of the Soviet state. Dzerzhinsky, who organized the first concentration camps in Russia, acquired a reputation as an incorruptible, ruthless, and fanatical communist. During the Russo-Polish War (1919–1920), Dzerzhinsky was appointed to the Polish revolutionary committee that was intended to become the Bolshevik government of Poland. But after the Red Army was forced to retreat from Poland, he again concentrated on Russian affairs. He remained head of the Cheka and commissar for internal affairs (after 1919) and became commissar for transport (1921). In 1924, after he had become a firm supporter of Joseph Stalin, Dzerzhinsky was given control of the Supreme Economic Council and was also elected a candidate of the Politburo. In 1926, during a debate at a Central Committee session, Dzerzhinsky collapsed and died. (The article from “Encyclopædia Britannica”).
Litvinenko, Aleksandr Valterovich
Sudoplatov, Pavel Anatolyevich (in Russian Ñóäîïëàòîâ, Ïàâåë Àíàòîëüåâè÷; 1907–1996),
 magnify |
About him: The article in Wikipwdia 
.
Yezhov, Nikolay Ivanovich (in Russian Åæîâ, Íèêîëàé Èâàíîâè÷; last name also spelled Ezhov; 1895–1939), Russian Communist Party official who, while chief of the Soviet security police (NKVD) from 1936 to 1938, administered the most severe stage of the great purges. Nothing is known of his early life (he was nicknamed the “Dwarf” because he was but five feet tall and lame). Joining the Communist Party in March 1917, he was a political commissar in the Red Army during the Civil War and thereafter rose through several political posts, becoming a functionary for the Party Central Committee in Moscow by 1927 and one of Stalin’s favourites. On April 29, 1933, he was named a member of a newly established central Purge Commission, which conducted a bloodless purge that ejected more than a million members from the Party. In January 1934, at the 17th Party Congress, he became a full member of the Central Committee and then, in February, succeeded Kaganovich in the key post of chairman of the Party Control Commission. In October 1937 he became a candidate member of the Politburo. Meanwhile, on Sept. 26, 1936, he had succeeded Yagoda as chief of the NKVD and, in January 1937, acquired the newly created title of General Commissar of State Security. In these roles he perpetrated the grand excesses known as the Yezhovshchina (or Ezhovshchina), the cruel, ruthless elimination or repression of Stalin’s enemies or alleged enemies in the Great Purge. The liquidations gradually extended from the Party leaders to the Party and state apparatchiki and finally to the general population. By the summer of 1938, however, Yezhov himself had become the object of Stalin’s suspicions, for reasons unknown. In December, Beria replaced him as head of the NKVD; and Yezhov, last heard of in January 1939, disappeared, probably executed. (The article from “Encyclopædia Britannica”, redacted).
(in Russian Ëåíèí, Âëàäèìèð Èëüè÷, original last name Ulyanov; 1870–1924), militant Marxist, the founder of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), inspirer and leader of the October coup (1917), the architect, builder, and first head of the Soviet state. He was the founder of the organization known as Comintern (Communist International) and posthumous source of “Leninism,” the doctrine codified and conjoined with Marx’s works by Lenin’s successors to form Marxism-Leninism, which became the Communist worldview. Even among many non-Communist scholars, Lenin has been regarded as the greatest revolutionary leader, the greatest revolutionary statesman in history, and the greatest revolutionary thinker since Marx.
Becoming a revolutionary. Lenin was the third of six children born into a close-knit, happy family of highly educated and cultured parents. His father was I.N. Ulyanov. Despite the comfortable circumstances of their upbringing, all five of the Ulyanov children who reached maturity joined the revolutionary movement. This was not an uncommon phenomenon in tsarist Russia, where even the highly educated and cultured intelligentsia were denied elementary civil and political rights. L., intellectually gifted and physically strong, early displayed a voracious passion for learning. His beloved eldest brother, Aleksandr Ilyich Ulyanov (1866–1887), a student at the University of St. Petersburg, was hanged for conspiring with a revolutionary terrorist group that plotted to assassinate Emperor Alexander III. Suddenly, at age 17, L. became the male head of the family, which was now stigmatized as having reared a “state criminal.” Fortunately the income from his mother's pension and inheritance kept the family in comfortable circumstances, although it could not prevent the frequent imprisonment or exile of her children. Moreover, L.’s high school principal (the father of A.F. Kerensky) courageously wrote a character reference that smoothed L.’s admission to the faculty of law of the imperial Kazan University (1887). But within three months he was expelled from the school, having been accused of participating in an illegal student assembly. He was arrested and banished from Kazan to his grandfather’s estate in the village of Kokushkino. In 1888 the authorities permitted him to return to Kazan but denied him readmission to the university. During this period of enforced idleness, he met exiled revolutionaries of the older generation and avidly read revolutionary political literature, especially Marx’s Das Kapital. He became a Marxist in Jan. 1889.
Siberian exile and “Iskra”. After much petitioning, Lenin took his law examinations and was graduated with a first-class degree in 1891. He practiced law in Samara in 1892–1893, then moved to St. Petersburg and, while working as a public defender, associated with revolutionary Marxist circles. In 1895 L. and other Marxists succeeded in unifying the Marxist groups of the capital in an organization known as the Union for the Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class. The Union issued leaflets and proclamations on the workers’ behalf, supported workers’strikes, and infiltrated workers’ education classes to impart to them the rudiments of Marxism. Soon the leaders of the Union were arrested. L. was jailed for 15 months and thereafter was sent into exile to Shushenskoye, in Siberia, for a term of three years. He and N.K. Krupskaya, a Union member, were married in Siberia, and she became his indispensable secretary and comrade. Upon completing his term of exile (1900), L. left the country and was joined later by Krupskaya in Munich. His first major task abroad was to join five Marxist editors in bringing out the newspaper Iskra, which they hoped would unify the Russian Marxist groups at home and abroad into a cohesive Social-Democratic party. The principal obstacle to the acceptance of Marxism by many of the Russian intelligentsia was their adherence to the widespread belief of the Narodniks that Marxism was inapplicable to peasant Russia, in which a proletariat (an industrial working class) was almost nonexistent. While in Siberian exile, L. had begun to investigate the peasant question, which culminated in his magisterial “Development of Capitalism in Russia” (published legally in 1899). In this work he argued that capitalism was rapidly destroying the peasant commune. The peasantry, constituted for the Narodniks a homogeneous social class, was in actuality rapidly stratifying into a well-off rural bourgeoisie, a middling peasantry, and an impoverished rural “proletariat and semi-proletariat.” In this last group, which comprised half the peasant population, L. found an ally for the extremely small industrial proletariat in Russia.
Formation of the Bolshevik party. In his “What Is To Be Done?” (1902), Lenin articulated one of his most momentous political innovations, his theory of the party as the “vanguard of the proletariat.” It would unremittingly suffuse the proletariat with Socialist consciousness and serve as mentor, leader, and guide, constantly showing the proletariat where its true class interests lie. Iskra’s success in recruiting Russian intellectuals to Marxism led L. and his comrades to the congress in London in 1903. This congress proclaimed itself to be the Second Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party (RSDWP). The key questions centred around the relation between the party and the proletariat, for whom the party claimed to speak. The Iskra group split, and L. finally left in a slight majority which were called Bolsheviks. Another group were dubbed Mensheviks. The two groups fought each other ceaselessly within the same RSDWP and professed the same program until 1912, when L. made the split final at the Prague Conference of the Bolshevik Party. According to L. the party had to be a highly centralized body organized around a small, ideologically homogeneous, hardened core of experienced professional revolutionaries, who would be elected to the central committee by the party congress and who would lead a ramified hierarchy of lower party organizations that would enjoy the support and sympathy of the proletariat and all groups opposed to tsarism. L. spared no effort to build just this kind of party until 1923, despite fierce attacks on his position by L. Trotsky and some other of his closest comrades of the Iskra days. They charged that his scheme of party organization and discipline tended toward suppression of free intraparty discussion, a dictatorship over the proletariat, not of the proletariat, and, finally, establishment of a one-man dictatorship. 
Subjects of this rubric are Lenin’s works, bibliographies on Lenin, biographical and critical studies of Lenin, historical studies of Lenin period. Interpretive studies of Leninism see in A bibliography on Leninism.
30000–30029. Russian sources.
30000. # The most complete collection of Lenin's works.
30030. Lenin V.I. The Collected Works, 45 vol. – 1960–1970. # A Soviet English translation of the 4th Russian edition of Lenin's works, enriched by editorial notes from the 5th edition.
Lenin V.I. Selected Works, 3 vol. – 1970–1971. # Includes most of the works mentioned in [Lenin] and many more.
<Lenin V.I.> The Essentials of Lenin, 2 vol. – 1947, reprinted 1973/ # Western publications of Lenin's works in English which follows the Soviet edition.
<Lenin V.I.> The Lenin Anthology / Ed. Robert C. Tucker. – 1975. # With interpretive comments.
Egan, David R..; Egan, Melinda A.; Genthner, Julie Anne. V.I. Lenin: An Annotated Bibliography of English-Language Sources to 1980. – 1982.
Lenin: The Man, the Theorist, the Leader: A Reappraisal / Eds. Leonard Schapiro and Peter Reddaway. – 1967, reissued 1987. # A collection of essays.
Balabanoff, Angelica. Impressions of Lenin. – 1964. # By the first secretary of the Communist International.
Carrere d’Encausse, Helene. Lenin: Revolution and Power. – 1982. # Originally published in French, 1979. A study of economic, social, political, and ideological issues.
Gruber, Helmut. International Communism in the Era of Lenin: A Documentary History. – 1967, reissued 1972. # With interpretive essays.
30036. Krupskaya, Nadezhda. Reminiscences of Lenin. – 1959. # Reticent, impersonal recollections by Lenin's widow. In Russian [30018].
Lazitch, Branko; Drachkovitch, Milorad M. Lenin and the Comintern. – 1972.
Nation, R. Craig. War on War: Lenin, the Zimmerwald Left, and the Origins of Communist Internationalism – 1989. # Explores Lenin’s part in the beginnings of Communism in the 20th century.
Polan A.J. Lenin and the End of Politics. – 1984. – An analysis of Lenin's politics and influence.
Ponomarev, Boris N. Lenin and the Revolutionary Process / Trans. from Russian. 1980. # Official Soviet interpretation of Lenin’s role is provided.
Rigby T.H. Lenin’s Government: Sovnarkom, 1917–1922. – 1979.
Rosmer, Alfred. Lenin’s Moscow. – 1971, reissued 1987; under the title: Moscow Under Lenin. – 1972. # Originally published in French, 1953. An insider’s account of the period 1920–1924, exploring the role of the party in the international Communist movement.
Service, Robert. Lenin: A Political Life, 3 vol. – 1985–1995.
Shub, David. Lenin / Rev. ed. – 1966, reprinted 1977. # A readable and informative biography by a contemporary.
Shukman, Harold. Lenin and the Russian Revolution. – 1967, reissued 1977.
Shukman, Harold; Katkov, George. Lenin’s Path to Power: Bolshevism and the Destiny of Russia. – 1971.
30045. Trotsky, Leon. Lenin: Notes for a Biographer. – 1971. # An appreciation of Lenin of the Iskra period and 1917–1918, the periods of Trotsky's closest collaboration with Lenin. In Russian [30024].
30045.1. Trotsky L. The Young Lenin / Trans. from Russian. – 1972.
Tumarkin, Nina. Lenin Lives!: The Lenin Cult in Soviet Russia. – 1983. – Explores the veneration of Lenin.
Ulam, Adam B. The Bolsheviks: The Intellectual and Political History of the Triumph of Communism in Russia. – 1965, reissued 1973. # A learned political biography.
30047. Valentinov, Nikolay. Encounters with Lenin. – 1968. # Revealing observations on Lenin’s personality by a former associate. In Russian [30012].
30047.1. Valentinov N. The Early Years of Lenin / Trans. from Russian. – 1969.
Warth, Robert D. Lenin. – 1973. # An introductory study.
Williams, Robert C. The Other Bolsheviks: Lenin and His Critics, 1904–1914. – 1986. # Lenin's influence on the Bolsheviks as well as their differences.
30049. vacant
Persons opposed to Stalin after Lenin’s death
Kameneva, Olga Davydovna (in Russian Êàìåíåâà, Îëüãà Äàâûäîâíà; née Bronstein; 1881–1941), chief of the Theatre department of the People’s Commissariat of people’s enlightenment (up to July 1919), the first wife of L.B. Kamenev and a sister of L.D. Trotsky.
Kollontay, Aleksandra Mikhaylovna (in Russian Êîëëîíòàé, Àëåêñàíäðà Ìèõàéëîâíà; née Domontovich; 1872–1952), Bolshevik revolutionary who advocated radical changes in social customs and institutions in Russia. Later, as a Soviet diplomat, she became the first woman to serve as an accredited ambassador in a foreign country.
Krupskaya, Nadezhda Konstsntinovna (in Russian Êðóïñêàÿ, Íàäåæäà Êîíñòàíòèíîâíà; 1869–1939),
Sverdlov, Yakov Mikhaylovich (in Russian Ñâåðäëîâ, ßêîâ Ìèõàéëîâè÷; 1885–1919),
Yaroslavsky, Yemelyan Mikhaylovich (in Russian ßðîñëàâñêèé, Åìåëüÿí Ìèõàéëîâè÷; 1878–1943),
Lenin’s death (in Russian ñìåðòü Ëåíèíà),
Pearson, Michael. The Sealed Train. – 1975, reissued 1989. # An account of Lenin’s associations with Germany and of the Russian Revolution.
Pipes, Richard. The Russian Revolution. – 1990.
Wolfe, Bertram D. Three Who Made a Revolution: A Biographical History / 4th rev. ed. – 1964, reissued 1984. – A pioneering combined biography of Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin.
30080–30097. Russian sources.
30098. vacant
(in Russian íýï; the acronym of New Economic Policy), the economic policy of the government of the Soviet Union from 1921 to 1928, representing a temporary retreat from its previous policy of extreme centralization and doctrinaire socialism. The policy of War Communism, in effect since 1918, had by 1921 brought the national economy to the point of total breakdown. The Kronshtadt Rebellion of March 1921 convinced the Communist Party and its leader, Lenin, of the need to retreat from socialist policies in order to maintain the party’s hold on power. Accordingly, the 10th Party Congress in March 1921 introduced the measures of the New Economic Policy. These measures included the return of most agriculture, retail trade, and small-scale light industry to private ownership and management while the state retained control of heavy industry, transport, banking, and foreign trade. Money was reintroduced into the economy in 1922 (it had been abolished under War Communism). The peasantry were allowed to own and cultivate their own land, while paying taxes to the state. The NEP reintroduced a measure of stability to the economy and allowed the Soviet people to recover from years of war, civil war, and governmental mismanagement. The small businessmen and managers who flourished in this period became known as NEP men. But the NEP was viewed by the Soviet government as merely a temporary expedient to allow the economy to recover while the Communists solidified their hold on power. By 1925 Bukharin had become the foremost supporter of the NEP, while Trotsky was opposed to it and Stalin was noncommittal. The NEP was dogged by the government's chronic inability to procure enough grain supplies from the peasantry to feed its urban work force. In 1928–1929 these grain shortages prompted Stalin, by then the country’s paramount leader, to forcibly eliminate the private ownership of farmland and to collectivize agriculture under the state’s control, thus ensuring the procurement of adequate food supplies for the cities in the future. This abrupt policy change, which was accompanied by the destruction of several million of the country’s most prosperous private farmers, marked the end of the NEP. It was followed by the reimposition of state control over all industry and commerce in the country by 1931. (The article from “Encyclopædia Britannica”).
(in Russian Îêòÿáðüñêàÿ ðåâîëþöèÿ; also known as October coup, Bolshevik Revolution, Russian Revolution of 1917).
the Constituent Assembly (in Russian Ó÷ðåäèòåëüíîå ñîáðàíèå),
is mentioned by D. Andreev only in drscriptive form: nation-wide assembly of represetatives (in Russian âñåíàðîäíîå ñîáðàíèå ïðåäñòàâèòåëåé), its runaway (2: 449).
(in Russian Ãðàæäàíñêàÿ âîéíà),
(in Russian Êðàñíàÿ Àðìèÿ; synonym: the Reds),
Frunze, Mikhail Vasilyevich (in Russian Ôðóíçå, Ìèõàèë Âàñèëüåâè÷; 1885–1925), Soviet army officer and military theorist, one of founders of the Red Army.
Tukhachevsky, Mikhail Nikolayevich (in Russian Òóõà÷åâñêèé, Ìèõàèë Íèêîëàåâè÷; 1893–1937),
(in Russian Áåëàÿ àðìèÿ; synonyms: the White guard, white guardsmen; conditional synonym: adjective white guard),
the Whites (in Russian áåëûå),
Denikin, Anton Ivanovich (in Russian Äåíèêèí, Àíòîí Èâàíîâè÷; 1872–1947),
Dukhonin, Nikolay Nikolayevich (in Russian Äóõîíèí, Íèêîëàé Íèêîëàåâè÷; 1876–1917),
Kaledin, Aleksey Maksimovich ( ïî-àíãë. Êàëåäèí, Àëåêñåé Ìàêñèìîâè÷; 1861–1918),
Kolchak, Aleksandr Vasilyevich (in Russian Êîë÷àê, Àëåêñàíäð Âàñèëüåâè÷; 1874–1920),
Krasnov, Pyotr Nikolayevich (in Russian Êðàñíîâ, Ïåòð Íèêîëàåâè÷; 1869–1947),
Kutepov, Aleksandr Pavlovich (in Russian Êóòåïîâ, Àëåêñàíäð Ïàâëîâè÷; 1882–1930?),
Miller, Yevgeny-Ludvig Karlovich (in Russian Ìèëëåð, Åâãåíèé-Ëþäâèã Êàðëîâè÷; 1867–1937),
Wrangel, Pyotr Nikolayevich (in Russian Âðàíãåëü, Ïåòð Íèêîëàåâè÷, 1878–1928),
.